^\si\ 


Ulhp  S.  1.  BtU  ffitbrarg 


North  (Earalina  ^tnU  Hmtiprfitty 

QH81 
B96 


NORTH  CAROLINA  STATE  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARIES 


S01910799  - 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  DATE 
INDICATED  BELOW  AND  IS  SUB- 
JECT TO  AN  OVERDUE  FINE  AS 
POSTED  AT  THE  CIRCULATION 
DESK. 


MA? 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 


I 


TIME  AND   CHANGE 


BY 


JOHN   BURROUGHS 


n 


BOSTON  AND   NEW  YORK 

HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

(^\)Z  Wazxixtt  ^xz^i  Cambrili0e 

1912 


COPYRIGHT,    I912,   BY  JOHN  BURROUGHS 
ALL   RIGHTS   RESERVED 

Published  October  iqi2 


SL-^^ 


PREFACE 

I  SUSPECT  that  in  this  volume  my  reader  will 
feel  that  I  have  given  him  a  stone  when  he  asked 
for  bread,  and  his  feeling  in  this  respect  will  need  no 
apology.  I  fear  there  is  more  of  the  matter  of  hard 
science  an^"ofscientific  speculation  in  this  collec- 
tion than  of  spiritual  and  aesthetic  nutriment;  but 
I  do  hope  the  volume  is  not  entirely  destitute  of  the 
latter.  If  I  have  not  in  some  degree  succeeded  in 
transmuting  my  rocks  into  a  kind  of  wholesome 
literary  bread,  or,  to  vary  the  figure,  in  turning  them 
into  a  soil  in  which  some  green  thing  or  flower  of 
human  interest  and  emotion  may  take  root  and 
grow,  then,  indeed,  have  I  come  short  of  the  end 
I  had  in  view. 

I  am  well  aware  that  my  own  interest  in  geology 
far  outruns  my  knowledge,  but  if  I  can  in  some  de- 
gree kindle  that  interest  in  my  reader,  I  shall  be 
putting  him  on  the  road  to  a  fuller  knowledge  than 
I  possess.  As  with  other  phases  of  nature,  I  have 
probably  loved  the  rocks  more  than  I  have  studied 
them.  In  my  youth  I  delighted  in  lingering  about 
and  beneath  the  ledges  of  my  native  hills,  partly  in 
the  spirit  of  adventure  and  a  boy's  love  of  the  wild, 
and  partly  with  an  eye  to  their  curious  forms,  and 

^  !A  JT  t*'^'^''^'^^'^v  or 


PREFACE 

the  evidences  of  immense  time  that  looked  out  from 
their  gray  and  crumbHng  fronts.  I  was  in  the  pre- 
sence of  Geologic  Time,  and  was  impressed  by  the 
scarred  and  lichen-coated  veteran  without  knowing 
who  or  what  he  was.  But  he  put  a  spell  upon  me 
that  has  deepened  as  the  years  have  passed,  and 
now  my  boyhood  ledges  are  more  interesting  to  me 
than  ever. 

If  one  gains  an  interest  in  the  history  of  the  earth, 
he  is  quite  sure  to  gain  an  interest  in  the  history  of 
the  life  on  the  earth.  If  the  former  illustrates  the 
theory  of  development,  so  must  the  latter.  The 
geologist  is  pretty  sure  to  be  an  evolutionist.  As 
science  turns  over  the  leaves  of  the  great  rocky 
volume,  it  sees  the  imprint  of  animals  and  plants 
upon  them  and  it  traces  their  changes  and  the  ap- 
pearance of  new  species  from  age  to  age.  The  bio- 
logic tree  has  grown  and  developed  as  the  geologic 
soil  in  which  it  is  rooted  has  deepened  and  ripened. 
I  am  sure  I  was  an  evolutionist  in  the  abstract,  or 
by  the  quality  and  complexion  of  my  mind,  before 
I  read  Darwin,  but  to  become  an  evolutionist  in 
the  concrete,  and  accept  the  doctrine  of  the  ani- 
mal origin  of  man,  has  not  for  me  been  an  easy 
matter. 

The  essays  on  the  subject  in  this  volume  are 
the  outcome  of  the  stages  of  brooding  and  think- 
ing which  I  have  gone  through  in  accepting  this 
doctrine.   I  am  aware  that  there  is  much  repeti- 

vi 


PREFACE 

tion  in  them,  but  maybe  on  that  very  account 
they  will  help  my  reader  to  go  along  with  me 
over  the  long  road  we  have  to  travel  to  reach  this 
conclusion. 

July,  1912. 


CONTENTS 

I.  The  Long  Road 1 

II.  The  Divine  Abyss 39 

m.  The  Spell  of  the  Yosemite        ...    71 

IV.  Through  the  Eyes  of  the  Geologist     .    85 

V.  Holidays  in  Hawaii 119 

VI.  The  Old  Ice  Flood 157 

Vn.  The  Friendly  Soil 167 

VIII.  Primal  Energies 171 

IX.  Scientific  Faith 175 

X.  "The  Worm  striving  to  be  Man"    .      .  187 

XI.  The  Phantoms  behind  us       .      .      .      .197 

Xn.  The  Hazards  of  the  Past     ....  225 

XIII.  The  Gospel  of  Nature 243 


i 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 


THE  LONG  ROAD 

I 

THE  long  road  I  have  in  mind  is  the  long  road  of 
evolution,  —  the  road  you  and  I  have  traveled 
in  the  guise  of  humbler  organisms,  from  the  first  uni- 
cellular life  in  the  old  Cambrian  seas  to  the  complex 
and  highly  specialized  creature  that  rules  supreme  in 
the  animal  kingdom  to-day.  Surely  a  long  journey, 
stretching  through  immeasurable  epochs  of  geologic 
time,  and  attended  by  vicissitudes  of  which  we  can 
form  but  feeble  conceptions. 

The  majority  of  readers,  I  fancy,  are  not  yet  ready 
to  admit  that  they,  or  any  of  their  forebears,  have 
ever  made  such  a  journey.  We  have  all  long  been 
taught  that  our  race  was  started  upon  its  career  only 
a  few  thousand  years  ago,  started,  not  amid  the  war- 
rings  of  savage  elemental  nature,  but  in  a  pleasant 
garden  with  everything  needed  close  at  hand.  This 
belief  has  faded  a  good  deal  in  our  time,  especially 
among  thoughtful  persons;  but  in  a  modified  form, 
as  the  special  creation  theory,  it  held  sway  in  the 
minds  of  the  older  naturalists  like  Agassiz  and  Daw- 

1 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

son,  long  after  Darwin  had  launched  his  revolution- 
ary doctrine  of  our  animal  origin,  putting  man  in  the 
same  zoological  scheme  as  the  lower  orders. 

We  are  slow  to  adjust  our  minds  to  the  revelations 
of  science,  they  have  been  so  long  adjusted  to  a  revel- 
ation, so-called,  of  an  entirely  different  character. 
It  gives  them  a  wrench  more  or  less  violent  when  we 
try  to  make  them  at  home  and  at  their  ease  amid 
these  new  and  startling  disclosures.  To  many  good 
people  evolution  seems  an  ungodly  doctrine,  like 
setting  up  a  remorseless  logic  in  the  place  of  an  om- 
nipresent Creator.  But  there  is  no  help  for  it.  Sci- 
ence has  fairly  turned  us  out  of  our  comfortable  little 
anthropomorphic  notion  of  things  into  the  great 
out-of-doors  of  the  universe.  We  must  and  will  get 
used  to  the  chill,  yea,  to  the  cosmic  chill,  if  need  be. 
Our  religious  instincts  will  be  all  the  hardier  for  it. 

When  we  accepted  Newton's  discovery  of  the 
force  called  gravitation,  we  virtually  surrendered 
ourselves  to  the  enemy,  and  started  upon  a  road, 
the  road  of  natural  causation,  that  traverses  the 
whole  system  of  created  things.  We  cannot  turn 
back;  we  may  lie  down  by  the  roadside  and  dream 
our  old  dreams,  but  our  children  and  their  children 
will  press  on,  and  will  be  exhilarated  by  the  journey. 

It  is  at  first  sight  an  unpalatable  truth  that  evo- 
lution confronts  us  with,  and  it  requires  courage 
calmly  to  face  it.  But  it  is  in  perfect  keeping  with 
the  whole  career  of  physical  science,  which  is  forever 


THE  LONG  ROAD 

directing  our  attention  to  common  near-at-hand 
facts  for  the  key  to  remote  and  mysterious  occur- 
rences. 

It  seems  to  me  that  evolution  adds  greatly  to  the 
wonder  of  life,  because  it  takes  it  out  of  the  realm  of 
the  arbitrary,  the  exceptional,  and  links  it  to  the  se- 
quence of  natural  causation.  That  man  should  have 
been  brought  into  existence  by  the  fiat  of  an  omni- 
potent power  is  less  an  occasion  for  wonder  than 
that  he  should  have  worked  his  way  up  from  the 
lower  non-human  forms.  That  the  manward  im- 
pulse should  never  have  been  lost  in  all  the  appalling 
vicissitudes  of  geologic  time,  that  it  should  have 
pushed  steadily  on,  through  mollusk  and  fish  and  am- 
phibian and  reptile,  through  swimming  and  creeping 
and  climbing  things,  and  that  the  forms  that  con- 
veyed it  should  have  escaped  the  devouring  mon- 
sters of  the  earth,  sea,  and  air  till  it  came  to  its  full 
estate  in  a  human  being,  is  the  wonder  of  wonders. 

In  like  manner,  evolution  raises  immensely  the 
value  of  the  biological  processes  that  are  every- 
where operative  about  us,  by  showing  us  that  these 
processes  are  the  channels  through  which  the  crea- 
tive energy  has  worked,  and  is  still  working.  Not  in 
the  far-off  or  in  the  exceptional  does  it  seek  the  key 
to  man's  origin,  but  in  the  sleepless  activity  of  the 
creative  force,  which  has  been  pushing  onward  and 
upward,  from  the  remotest  time,  till  it  has  come  to 
full  fruition  in  man. 

3 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

.  It  is  easy  to  inject  into  man's  natural  history  a 
supernatural  element,  as  nearly  all  biologists  and 
anthropologists  before  Darwin's  time  did,  and  as 
many  serious  people  still  do.  It  is  too  easy,  in  fact, 
and  the  temptation  to  do  so  is  great.  It  makes  short 
work  of  the  problem  of  man's  origin,  and  saves  a 
deal  of  trouble.  But  this  method  is  more  and  more 
discredited,  and  the  younger  biologists  and  natural 
philosophers  accept  the  zoological  conception  of 
man,  which  links  him  with  all  the  lower  forms,  and 
proceed  to  work  from  that. 

When  we  have  taken  the  first  step  in  trying  to 
solve  the  problem  of  man's  origin,  where  can  we 
stop  ?  Can  we  find  any  point  in  his  history  where  we 
can  say.  Here  his  natural  history  ends,  and  his  su- 
pernatural history  begins  ?  Does  his  natural  history 
end  with  the  pre-glacial  man,  with  the  cave  man,  or 
the  river-drift  man,  with  the  low-browed,  long-jawed 
fossil  man  of  Java,  —  Pithecanthropus  erectuSy  de- 
scribed by  Du  Bois  ?  Where  shall  we  stop  on  his 
trail  ?  I  had  almost  said  "step  on  his  tail,"  for  we 
undoubtedly,  if  we  go  back  far  enough,  come  to  a 
time  when  man  had  a  tail.  Every  unborn  child  at  a 
certain  stage  of  its  development  still  has  a  tail,  as  it 
also  has  a  coat  of  hair  and  a  hand-like  foot.  But 
could  we  stop  with  the  tailed  man " —  the  manlike 
ape,  or  the  apelike  man  ?  Did  his  Creator  start  him 
with  this  appendage,  or  was  it  a  later  suflix  of  his 
own  invention  ? 

4 


THE  LONG  ROAD 

If  we  once  seriously  undertake  to  solve  the  riddle 
of  man's  origin,  and  go  back  along  the  Hne  of  his  de- 
scent, I  doubt  if  we  can  find  the  point,  or  the  form, 
where  the  natural  is  supplanted  by  the  supernatural 
as  it  is  called,  where  causation  ends  and  miracle  be- 
gins. Even  the  first  dawn  of  protozoic  life  in  the  pri- 
mordial seas  must  have  been  natural,  or  it  would  not 
have  occurred,  —  must  have  been  potential  in  what 
went  before  it.  In  this  universe,  so  far  as  we  know 
it,  one  thing  springs  from  another;  the  sequence  of 
cause  and  effect  is  continuous  and  inviolable. 

We  know  that  no  man  is  born  of  full  stature, 
with  his  hat  and  boots  on;  we  know  that  he  grows 
from  an  infant,  and  we  know  the  infant  grows  from 
a  foetus,  and  that  the  foetus  grows  from  a  bit  of 
nucleated  protoplasm  in  the  mother's  womb.  Why 
may  not  the  race  of  man  grow  from  a  like  simple 
beginning.^  It  seems  to  be  the  order  of  nature;  it  is 
the  order  of  nature,  —  first  the  germ,  the  inception, 
then  the  slow  growth  from  the  simple  to  the  com- 
plex. It  is  the  order  of  our  own  thoughts,  our  own 
arts,  our  own  civilization,  our  own  language. 

In  our  candid  moments  we  acknowledge  the  ani- 
mal in  ourselves  and  in  our  neighbors,  —  especially 
in  our  neighbors,  —  the  beast,  the  shark,  the  hog, 
the  sloth,  the  fox,  the  monkey;  but  to  accept  the 
notion  of  our  animal  origin,  that  gives  us  pause.  To 
believe  that  our  remote  ancestor,  no  matter  how 
remote  in  time  or  space,  was  a  lowly  organized  crea- 

5 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

ture  living  in  the  primordial  seas  with  no  more 
brains  than  a  shovel-nosed  shark  or  a  gar-pike,  puts 
our  scientific  faith  to  severe  test. 

Think  of  it.  For  countless  ages,  millions  upon 
millions  of  years,  we  see  the  earth  swarming  with 
life,  low  bestial  life,  devouring  and  devoured,  myri- 
ads of  forms,  all  in  bondage  to  nature  or  natural 
forces,  living  only  to  eat  and  to  breed,  localized, 
dependent  upon  place  and  clime,  shaped  to  specific 
ends  like  machines,  —  to  fly,  to  swim,  to  climb,  to 
run,  to  dig,  to  drill,  to  weave,  to  wade,  to  graze,  to 
crush,  —  knowing  not  what  they  do,  as  void  of  con- 
scious purpose  as  the  thorns,  the  stings,  the  hooks, 
the  coils,  and  the  wings  in  the  vegetable  world,  mak- 
ing no  impression  upon  the  face  of  nature,  as  much 
a  part  of  it  as  the  trees  and  the  stones,  species  after 
species  having  its  day,  and  then  passing  off  the 
stage,  when  suddenly,  in  the  day  before  yesterday  in 
the  geologic  year,  so  suddenly  as  to  give  some  color 
of  truth  to  the  special  creation  theory,  a  new  and 
strange  animal  appears,  with  new  and  strange  pow- 
ers, separated  from  the  others  by  what  appears  an 
impassable  gulf,  less  specialized  in  his  bodily  powers 
than  the  others,  but  vastly  more  specialized  in  his 
brain  and  mental  powers,  instituting  a  new  order  of 
things  upon  the  earth,  the  face  of  which  he  in  time 
changes  through  his  new  gift  of  reason,  inventing 
tools  and  weapons  and  language,  harnessing  the 
physical  forces  to  his  own  ends,  and  putting  all 

6 


THE  LONG  ROAD 

things  under  his  feet,  —  man  the  wonder-worker, 
the  beholder  of  the  stars,  the  critic  and  spectator  of 
creation  itself,  the  thinker  of  the  thoughts  of  God, 
the  worshiper,  the  devotee,  the  hero,  spreading 
rapidly  over  the  earth,  and  developing  with  pro- 
digious strides  when  once  fairly  launched  upon  his 
career.  Can  it  be  possible,  we  ask,  that  this  god  was 
fathered  by  the  low  bestial  orders  below  him,  —  in- 
stinct giving  birth  to  reason,  animal  ferocity  devel- 
oping into  human  benevolence,  the  slums  of  nature 
sending  forth  the  ruler  of  the  earth.  It  is  a  hard 
proposition,  I  say,  undoubtedly  the  hardest  that 
science  has  ever  confronted  us  with. 

Haeckel,  discussing  this  subject,  suggests  that  it  is 
the  parvenu  in  us  that  is  reluctant  to  own  our  lowly 
progenitors,  the  pride  of  family  and  position,  like 
that  of  would-be  aristocratic  sons  who  conceal  the 
humble  origin  of  their  parents.  But  it  is  more  than 
that;  it  is  the  old  difficulty  of  walking  by  faith  where 
there  is  nothing  visible  to  walk  upon:  we  lack  faith 
in  the  efficiency  of  the  biologic  laws,  or  any  mun- 
dane forces,  to  bridge  the  tremendous  chasm  that 
separates  man  from  even  the  highest  of  the  lower 
orders.  His  radical  unlikeness  to  all  the  forms  below 
him,  as  if  he  moved  in  a  world  apart,  into  which 
they  could  never  enter,  as  in  a  sense  he  does,  is 
where  the  difficulty  lies.  Moreover,  evolution  balks 
us  because  of  the  inconceivable  stretch  of  time  dur- 
ing which  it  has  been  at  work.  It  is  as  impossible  for 

7 


TII^IE  AND  CHANGE 

us  to  grasp  geological  time  as  sidereal  space.  All  the 
standards  of  measurement  furnished  us  by  experi- 
ence are  as  inadequate  as  is  a  child's  cup  to  measure 
the  ocean. 

Several  million  years,  or  one  million  years,  —  how 
can  we  take  it  in?  We  cannot.  A  hundred  years  is  a 
long  time  in  human  history,  and  how  we  pause  be- 
fore a  thousand!    Then  think  of  ten  thousand,  of 
fifty  thousand,  of  one  hundred  thousand,  of  ten 
hundred  thousand,  or  one  million,  or  of  one  hundred 
million!    What  might  not  the  slow  but  ceaseless 
creative  energy  do  in  that  time,  changing  but  a  hair 
in  each  generation!   If  our  millionaires  had  to  earn 
their  wealth  cent  by  cent,  and  carry  each  cent  home 
with  them  at  night,  it  would  be  some  years  before 
they  became  millionaires.  This  is  but  a  faint  symbol 
of  the  slow  process  by  which  nature  has  piled  up  her 
riches.  She  has  had  no  visions  of  sudden  wealth.  To 
clothe  the  earth  with  soil  made  from  the  disinte- 
grated mountains  —  can  we  figure  that  time  to  our- 
selves? The  Orientals  try  to  get  a  hint  of  eternity  by 
saying  that  when  the  Himalayas  have  been  ground 
to  powder  by  allowing  a  gauze  veil  to  float  against 
them  once  in  a  thousand  years,  eternity  will  only 
have  just  begun.    Our  mountains  have  been  pul- 
verized by  a  process  almost  as  slow.  In  our  case  the 
gauze  veil  is  the  air,  and  the  rains,  and  the  snows, 
before  which  even  granite  crumbles.   See  what  the 
god  of  erosion,  in  the  shape  of  water,  has  done  in  the 

8 


THE   LONG  ROAD 

river  valleys  and  gorges  —  cut  a  mile  deep  in  the 
Colorado  canyon,  and  yet  this  canyon  is  but  of  yes- 
terday in  geologic  time.  Only  give  the  evolutionary 
god  time  enough  and  all  these  miracles  are  surely 
wrought. 

Truly  it  is  hard  for  us  to  realize  what  a  part  time 
has  played  in  the  earth's  history,  —  just  time,  dur- 
ation, —  so  slowly,  oh,  so  slowly,  have  the  great 
changes  been  brought  about!  The  turning  of  mud 
and  silt  into  rock  in  the  bottom  of  the  old  seas  seems 
to  have  been  merely  a  question  of  time.  Mud  does 
not  become  rock  in  man's  time,  nor  vegetable  mat- 
ter become  coal.  These  processes  are  too  slow  for  us. 
The  jflexing  and  folding  of  the  rocky  strata,  miles 
deep,  under  an  even  pressure,  is  only  a  question  of 
time.  Allow  time  enough  and  force  enough,  and  a 
layer  of  granite  may  be  bent  like  a  bow.  The  crys- 
tals of  the  rock  seem  to  adjust  themselves  to  the 
strain,  and  to  take  up  new  positions,  just  as  they  do, 
much  more  rapidly,  in  a  cake  of  ice  under  pressure. 
Probably  no  human  agency  could  flex  a  stratum  of 
rock,  because  there  is  not  time  enough,  even  if  there 
were  power  enough.  "A  low  temperature  acting 
gradually,"  says  my  geology,  "  during  an  indefinite 
age  would  produce  results  that  could  not  be  other- 
wise brought  about  even  through  greater  heat.'* 
**Give  us  time,"  say  the  great  mechanical  forces, 
"and  we  will  show  you  the  immobile  rocks  and  your 
rigid  mountain  chains  as  flexible  as  a  piece  of 

9 


TIME  AND   CHANGE 

leather."  "Give  us  time,"  say  the  dews  and  the 
rains  and  the  snowflakes,  "and  we  will  make  you 
a  garden  out  of  those  same  stubborn  rocks  and 
frowning  ledges."  "Give  us  time,"  says  Life,  start- 
ing with  her  protozoans  in  the  old  Cambrian  seas, 
"and  I  w^ill  not  stop  till  I  have  peopled  the  earth 
with  myriad  forms  and  crowned  them  all  with 
man." 

Dana  thinks  that  had  "a  man  been  living  during 
the  changes  that  produced  the  coal,  he  would  not 
have  suspected  their  progress,"  so  slow  and  quiet 
were  they.  It  is  probable  that  parts  of  our  own  sea- 
coast  are  sinking  and  other  parts  rising  as  rapidly  as 
the  oscillation  of  the  land  and  sea  went  on  that  re- 
sulted in  the  laying  down  of  the  coal  measures. 

An  eternity  to  man  is  but  a  day  in  the  cosmic  pro- 
cess. In  the  face  of  geologic  time,  man's  appearance 
upon  the  earth  as  man,  with  a  written  history,  is 
something  that  has  just  happened;  it  was  in  this 
morning's  paper,  we  read  of  it  at  breakfast.  As 
evolution  goes,  it  will  not  be  old  news  yet  for  a  hun- 
dred thousand  years  or  so,  and  by  that  time,  what 
will  he  have  done,  if  he  goes  on  at  his  present  rate 
of  accelerated  speed?  Probably  he  will  not  have 
caught  the  gods  of  evolution  at  their  work,  or  wit- 
nessed the  origin  of  species  by  natural  descent,  these 
things  are  too  slow  for  him;  but  he  will  certainly 
have  found  out  many  things  that  we  are  all  eager 
to  know. 

10 


THE  LONG  ROAD 

In  nature  as  a  whole  we  see  results  and  not  pro- 
cesses. We  see  the  rock  strata  bent  and  folded,  we 
see  the  whole  mountain-chains  flexed  and  shortened 
by  the  flexure;  but  had  we  been  present,  we  should 
not  have  suspected  what  was  going  on.  Our  little 
span  of  life  does  not  give  us  the  parallax  necessary. 
The  rock  strata,  miles  thick,  may  be  being  flexed 
now  under  our  feet,  and  we  know  it  not.  The  earth 
is  shrinking,  but  so  slowly!  When,  under  the  slow 
strain,  the  strata  suddenly  give  way  or  sink,  and  an 
earthquake  results,  then  we  know  something  has 
happened. 

A  recent  biologist  and  physicist  thinks,  and  doubt- 
less thinks  wisely,  that  the  reason  why  we  have 
never  been  able  to  produce  living  from  non-living 
matter  in  our  laboratories,  is  that  we  cannot  take 
time  enough.  Even  if  we  could  bring  about  the  con- 
ditions of  the  early  geologic  ages  in  which  life  had 
its  dawn,  which  of  course  we  cannot,  we  could  not 
produce  life  because  we  have  not  geologic  time  at 
our  disposal. 

The  reaction  which  we  call  life  was  probably  as 
much  a  cosmic  or  geologic  event  as  were  the  reactions 
which  produced  the  different  elements  and  com- 
pounds, and  demanded  the  same  slow  gestation  in 
the  womb  of  time.  During  what  cycles  upon  cycles 
the  great  mother-forces  of  the  universe  must  have 
brooded  over  the  inorganic  before  the  organic  was 
brought  forth !  The  archean  age,  during  which  the 

11 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

brooding  seems  to  have  gone  on,  was  probably  as 
long  as  all  the  ages  since. 

How  we  are  baffled  when  we  talk  about  the  begin- 
ning of  anything  in  nature  or  in  our  own  lives !  In 
our  experience  there  must  be  a  first,  but  when  did 
manhood  begin;  when  did  puberty,  when  did  old 
age,  begin  ?  When  did  each  stage  of  our  mental 
growth  begin  ?  When  or  where  did  the  English  lan- 
guage begin,  or  the  French,  or  the  German  ?  Was 
there  a  first  English  word  spoken  ?  From  the  first 
animal  sound,  if  we  can  conceive  of  such,  up  to  the 
human  speech  of  to-day,  there  is  an  infinite  grada- 
tion of  sounds  and  words. 

Was  there  a  first  summer,  a  first  winter,  a  first 
spring  ?  There  could  hardly  have  been  a  first  day 
even  for  ages  and  ages,  but  only  slowly  approxi- 
mating day.  After  an  immense  lapse  of  time  the  air 
must  have  cleared  and  the  day  become  separated 
from  the  night,  and  the  seasons  must  have  become 
gradually  defined.  Things  slowly  emerge  one  after 
another  from  a  dim,  nebulous  condition,  both  in  our 
own  growth  and  experience  and  in  the  development 
of  the  physical  universe. 

In  nature  there  is  no  first  and  last.  There  is  an 
endless  beginning  and  an  endless  ending.  There  was 
no  first  man  or  first  woman,  no  first  bird,  or  fish,  or 
reptile.  Back  of  each  one  stretches  an  endless  chain 
of  approximating  men  and  birds  and  reptiles. 

This  talk  about  the  time  and  place  where  man 

12 


THE  LONG  ROAD 

began  his  existence  seems  to  me  misleading,  be- 
cause it  appears  to  convey  the  idea  that  he  began 
as  man  at  some  time,  in  some  place.  Whereas  he 
grew.  He  began  where  and  when  the  first  cell  ap- 
peared, and  he  has  been  on  the  road  ever  since. 
There  is  no  point  in  the  line  where  he  emerged  from 
the  not-man  and  became  man.  He  was  emerging 
from  the  not-man  for  millions  of  years,  and  when 
you  put  your  finger  on  an  animal  form  and  say. 
This  is  man,  you  must  go  back  through  whole  geo- 
logic periods  before  you  reach  the  not-man.  If  Dar- 
win is  right,  there  is  no  more  reason  for  believing 
that  the  different  species  or  forms  of  animal  life  were 
suddenly  introduced  than  there  is  for  believing  that 
the  soil,  or  the  minerals,  gold,  silver,  diamonds,  or 
vegetable  mold  and  verdure  were  suddenly  intro- 
duced. 

II 

If  we  know  anything  of  the  earth's  past  history, 
we  know  that  the  continents  were  long  in  forming, 
that  they  passed  through  many  vicissitudes  of  heat 
and  cold,  of  fire  and  flood,  of  upheaval  and  sub- 
sidence —  that  they  had,  so  to  speak,  their  first 
low,  simple  rudimentary  or  invertebrate  life,  that 
they  were  all  slow  in  getting  their  backbones,  slower 
still  in  clothing  their  rock  ribs  with  soil  and  ver- 
dure, that  they  passed  through  a  sort  of  amphibian 
stage,  now  under  water,  now  on  dry  land,  that 
their  many  kinds  of  soils  and  climes  were  not  differ- 

13 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

entlated  and  their  complex  water-systems  estab- 
lished till  well  into  Tertiary  times  —  in  short,  that 
they  have  passed  more  and  more  from  the  simple 
to  the  complex,  from  the  disorganized  to  the  organ- 
ized. When  man  comes  to  draw  his  sustenance 
from  their  breasts,  may  they  not  be  said  to  have 
reached  the  mammalian  stage  ? 

The  fertile  plain  and  valley  and  the  rounded  hill 
are  of  slow  growth,  immensely  slow.  But  any  given 
stage  of  the  earth  has  followed  naturally  from  the 
previous  stage,  only  more  and  more  and  higher  and 
higher  forces  took  a  hand  in  the  game.  First  its  ele- 
ments passed  through  the  stage  of  fire,  then  through 
the  stage  of  water,  then  merged  into  the  stage  of  air. 
More  and  more  the  aerial  elements  —  oxygen,  car- 
bon, nitrogen  —  have  entered  into  its  constituents 
and  fattened  the  soil.  The  humanizing  of  the  earth 
has  been  largely  a  process  of  oxidation.  More  than 
disintegrated  rock  makes  up  the  soil;  the  air  and  the 
rains  and  the  snows  have  all  contributed  a  share. 

The  history  of  the  soil  which  we  turn  with  our 
spade,  and  stamp  with  our  shoes,  covers  millions 
upon  millions  of  years.  It  is  the  ashes  of  the  moun- 
tains, the  leavings  of  untold  generations  of  animal 
and  vegetable  life.  It  came  out  of  the  sea,  it  drifted 
from  the  heavens ;  it  flowed  out  from  the  fiery  heart 
of  the  globe;  it  has  been  worked  over  and  over  by 
frost  and  flood,  blown  by  winds,  shoveled  by  ice, 
—  mixed  and  kneaded  and  moulded  as  the  house- 

14 


THE  LONG  ROAD 

wife  kneads  and  moulds  her  bread,  —  refining  and 
refining  from  age  to  age.  Much  of  it  was  held  in 
solution  in  the  primordial  seas,  whence  it  was  fil- 
tered and  used  and  precipitated  by  countless  forms 
of  marine  life,  making  a  sediment  that  in  time  be- 
came rocks,  that  again  in  time  became  continents 
or  parts  of  them,  which  the  aerial  forces  reduced  to 
soil.  Indeed,  the  soil  itself  is  an  evolution,  as  much 
so  as  the  life  upon  it. 

We  probably  have  little  conception  of  how  inti- 
mate and  cooperative  all  parts  of  the  universe  are 
with  one  another,  —  of  the  debt  we  owe  to  the  far- 
thest stars,  and  to  the  remotest  period  of  time.  We 
must  owe  a  debt  to  the  monsters  of  Mesozoic  and 
Csenozoic  time;  they  helped  to  fertihze  the  soil  for 
us,  and  to  discipline  the  ruder  forces  of  life.  We  owe  a 
debt  to  all  that  has  gone  before :  to  the  heavens  above 
and  to  the  earth-fires  beneath,  to  the  ice-sheets  that 
ground  down  the  mountains,  and  to  the  ocean  cur- 
rents. Just  as  we  owe  a  debt  to  the  men  and  women 
in  our  line  of  descent,  so  we  owe  a  debt  to  the  ruder 
primordial  forces  that  shaped  the  planet  to  our  use, 
and  took  a  hand  in  the  game  of  animal  life. 

The  gods  of  evolution  had  served  a  long  appren- 
ticeship ;  they  had  gained  proficiency  and  were  mas- 
ter workmen.  Or  shall  we  say  that  the  elements  of 
life  had  become  more  plastic  and  adaptable,  or  that 
the  life  fund  had  accumulated,  so  to  speak?  Had 
the  vast  succession  of  living  beings,  the  long  ex- 

15 


TIME  AND   CHANGE 

perience  in  organization,  at  last  made  the  problem 
of  the  origin  of  man  easier  to  solve? 

One  fancies  every  living  thing  as  not  only  re- 
turning its  mineral  elements  to  the  soil,  but  as  in 
some  subtle  way  leaving  its  vital  forces  also,  and 
thus  contributing  to  the  impalpable,  invisible  store- 
house of  vital  energy  of  the  globe. 

At  first  among  the  mammalian  tribes  there  was 
much  muscle  and  little  brains.  But  in  the  middle 
Tertiary  the  mammal  brain  began  suddenly  to  en- 
large, so  that  in  our  time  the  brain  of  the  horse  is 
more  than  eight  times  the  size  of  the  brain  of  his 
progenitor,  the  dinoceras  of  Eocene  times. 

Nature  seems  to  have  experimented  with  brains 
and  nerve  ganglia,  as  she  has  with  so  many  other 
things.  The  huge  reptilian  creatures  of  Mesozoic 
time  —  the  various  dinosaurs  —  had  ridiculously 
small  heads  and  brains,  but  they  had  what  might 
be  called  supplementary  brains  well  toward  the 
other  end  of  the  body,  —  great  nervous  masses  near 
the  sacrum,  many  times  the  size  of  the  ostensible 
brain,  which  no  doubt  performed  certain  brain  func- 
tions. But  the  principle  of  centralization  was  at 
work,  and  when  in  later  time  we  reach  the  higher 
mammalian  forms,  we  find  these  outlying  nervous 
masses  called  in,  so  to  speak,  and  concentrated  in 
the  head. 

Nature  has  tried  the  big,  the  gigantic,  over  and 
over,  and  then  abandoned  it.     In  Carboniferous 

16 


THE  LONG  ROAD 

times  there  was  a  gigantic  dragon-fly,  measuring 
more  than  two  feet  in  the  expanse  of  wings.  Still 
earlier,  there  were  gigantic  moUusks  and  sea  scor- 
pions, a  cephalopod  larger  than  a  man;  then  gigan- 
tic fishes  and  amphibians  and  reptiles,  followed  by 
enormous  mammals.  But  the  geologic  record  shows 
that  these  huge  forms  did  not  continue.  The  mol- 
lusks  that  last  unchanged  through  millions  of  years 
are  the  clam  and  the  oyster  of  our  day.  The  huge 
mosses  and  tree-ferns  are  gone,  and  only  their 
humbler  types  remain.  Among  men  giants  are 
short-lived. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  steady  increase  in  size  of 
certain  other  species  of  animals  during  the  later  geo- 
logic ages  is  a  curious  and  interesting  fact.  The  first 
progenitors  of  the  elephant  that  have  been  found 
show  a  small  animal  that  steadily  grew  through  the 
ages  till  the  animal  as  we  now  find  it  is  reached. 
Among  the  invertebrates  this  same  progressive  in- 
crease in  size  has  been  noted,  a  small  shell  in 
the  Devonian  becoming  enormous  in  the  Triassic. 
Certain  species  of  sharks  of  medium  size  in  the 
lower  Eocene  continue  to  increase  till  they  attain 
the  astounding  dimensions  in  the  Miocene  and  Plio- 
cene of  over  one  hundred  feet  long.  A  certain  fish 
appearing  in  the  Devonian  as  a  small  fish  of  seven 
centimetres  in  length,  becomes  in  the  Carboniferous 
era  a  creature  twenty-seven  centimetres  in  length. 
Among  the  mammals  of  Tertiary  times  this  same 

17 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

law  of  steady  increase  in  size  has  been  operative, 
as  seen  in  the  FelidcBy  the  stag,  and  the  antelope. 
Man  himself  has,  no  doubt,  been  under  the  same 
law,  and  is  probably  a  much  larger  animal  than  any 
of  his  Tertiary  ancestors.  In  the  vegetable  world 
this  process,  in  many  cases,  at  least,  has  been  re- 
versed, and  the  huge  treelike  club-mosses  and  horse- 
tails of  Carboniferous  times  have  dwindled  in  our 
time  to  very  insignificant  herbaceous  forms. 

Animals  of  overweening  size  are  handicapped  in 
many  ways,  so  that  nature  in  most  cases  finally 
abandons  the  gigantic  and  sticks  to  the  medium 
and  the  small. 

Ill 

Can  we  fail  to  see  the  significance  of  the  order  in 
which  life  has  appeared  upon  the  globe  —  the  as- 
cending series  from  the  simple  to  the  more  and  more 
complex?  Can  we  doubt  that  each  series  is  the  out- 
come of  the  one  below  it  —  that  there  is  a  logical 
sequence  from  the  protozoa  up  through  the  inver- 
tebrates, the  vertebrates,  to  man.'^  Is  it  not  like  all 
that  we  know  of  the  method  of  nature?  Could  we 
substitute  the  life  of  one  period  for  that  of  another 
without  doing  obvious  violence  to  the  logic  of  na- 
ture? Is  there  no  fundamental  reason  for  the  gra- 
dation we  behold? 

All  animal  life  lowest  in  organization  is  earliest  in 
time,  and  vice  versa^  the  different  classes  of  a  sub- 
kingdom,  and  the  different  orders  of  a  class,  suc- 

18 


THE  LONG  ROAD 

ceeding  one  another,  as  Cope  says,  in  the  relative 
order  of  their  zoological  rank.  Thus  the  sponges  are 
later  than  the  protozoa,  the  corals  succeed  the 
sponges,  the  sea-urchins  come  after  the  corals,  the 
shell-fish  follow  the  sea-urchins,  the  articulates  are 
later  than  the  shell-fish,  the  vertebrates  are  later 
than  the  articulates.  Among  the  former,  the  am- 
phibian follows  the  fish,  the  reptile  follows  the  am- 
phibian, the  mammal  follows  the  reptile,  and  non- 
placental  mammals  are  followed  by  the  placental. 

It  almost  seems  as  if  nature  hesitated  whether  to 
produce  the  mammal  from  the  reptile  or  from  the 
amphibian,  as  the  mammal  bears  marks  of  both 
in  its  anatomy,  and  which  was  the  parent  stem  is 
still  a  question. 

The  heart  started  as  a  simple  tube  in  the  Lepto- 
cardii ;  it  divides  itself  into  two  cavities  in  the 
fishes,  into  three  in  the  reptiles,  and  into  four  in  the 
birds  and  mammals.  So  the  ossification  of  the  ver- 
tebral column  takes  place  progressively,  from  the 
Silurian  to  the  middle  Jurassic. 

The  same  ascending  series  of  creation  as  a  whole 
is  repeated  in  the  inception  and  development  of 
every  one  of  the  higher  animals  to-day.  Each  one 
begins  as  a  single  cell,  which  soon  becomes  a  con- 
geries of  cells,  which  is  followed  by  congeries  of  con- 
geries of  cells,  till  the  highly  complex  structure  of  the 
grown  animal  with  all  its  intricate  physiological 
activities  and  specialization  of  parts,  is  reached.  It 

19 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

is  t^T)ical  of  the  course  of  the  creative  energy  from 
the  first  unicellular  life  up  to  man,  each  succeeding 
stage  flowing  out  of,  and  necessitated  by,  the  pre- 
ceding stage. 

How  slowly  and  surely  the  circulatory  system 
improved!  From  the  cold-blooded  animal  to  the 
warm-blooded  is  a  great  advance.  In  the  warm- 
blooded is  developed  the  capacity  to  maintain  a 
fixed  temperature  while  that  of  the  surrounding 
medium  changes.  The  brain  and  nervous  system  dis- 
play the  same  progressive  ascent  from  the  brainless 
acrania,  up  through  the  fishes,  batrachia,  reptiles, 
and  birds  to  the  top  in  mammals.  The  same  with  the 
skeletons  in  the  invertebrates,  from  membrane  to 
cartilage,  from  cartilage  to  bone,  so  that  the  primi- 
tive cartilage  remaining  in  any  part  of  the  skeleton 
is  considered  a  mark  of  inferiority. 

According  to  Cope,  there  has  been  progressive 
improvement  in  the  mechanism  of  the  body  —  it 
has  become  a  better  and  better  machine.  The  sus- 
pension of  the  lower  jaw,  so  as  to  bring  the  teeth 
nearer  the  power,  —  the  masseter  and  related  mus- 
cles,—  was  a  slow  evolution  and  a  great  advance. 
The  fin  is  more  primitive  than  the  limb;  the  limbs 
themselves  display  a  constantly  increasing  differen- 
tiation of  parts  from  the  batrachian  to  the  mamma- 
Han.  There  was  no  good  ankle  joint  in  early  Eocene 
times.  The  model  ankle  joint  is  a  tongue  and  groove 
arrangement,  and  this  is  a  later  evolution.    In  Eo- 

20 


THE  LONG  ROAD 

cene  times  they  were  nearly  all  flat.  The  arched 
foot,  too,  comes  in;  this  is  an  advance  on  the  flat 
foot.  The  bones  of  the  palms  and  soles  are  not  locked 
until  the  later  Tertiary.  The  vertebral  column  pro- 
gressed in  the  same  way,  from  flat  to  the  double 
curve  and  the  interlocking  process,  thus  securing 
greatest  strength  with  greatest  mobility.  In  the 
earliest  life  locomotion  was  diffused,  later  it  be- 
came concentrated.  The  worm  walks  with  its 
whole  body. 

IV 

If  we  figure  to  ourselves  the  geologic  history  of  the 
earth  under  the  symbol  of  a  year  of  three  hundred 
and  sixty-five  days,  each  day  a  million  years,  which 
is  probably  not  far  out  of  the  way,  then  man,  the 
biped,  the  Homo  sapiens^  in  relation  to  this  immense 
past,  is  of  to-day,  or  of  this  very  morning;  while  the 
origin  of  the  first  vertebrates,  the  fishes,  from  which 
he  has  arisen,  falls  nearer  the  middle  of  the  great 
year.  Or,  dividing  this  geologic  year  into  four  di- 
visions or  seasons,  primary,  secondary,  tertiary,  and 
quaternary,  the  fishes  fall  in  the  primary,  the  rep- 
tiles in  the  secondary,  the  mammals  in  the  ter- 
tiary, and  man  in  the  early  quaternary. 

If  the  fluid  earth  hardened,  and  the  seas  were 
formed  in  the  first  month  of  this  year,  then  probably 
the  first  beginning  of  life  appeared  in  the  second 
month,  the  invertebrate  in  the  third  or  fourth,  — 
March  or  April,  —  the  vertebrates  in  May  or  June, 

21 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

the  amphibians  in  July  or  August,  the  reptiles  in 
August  or  September,  the  mammals  in  October  or 
November,  and  man  in  December,  —  separated 
from  the  first  beginnings  of  life  by  all  those  mil- 
lions upon  millions  of  years. 

If  life  is  a  ferment,  as  we  are  told  it  is,  how  long 
it  took  this  yeast  to  leaven  the  whole  loaf!  Man 
is  evidently  the  end  of  the  series,  he  is  the  top  of 
the  biological  tree.  His  specialization  upon  physical 
lines  seems  to  have  ended  far  back  in  geologic  time; 
his  future  speciaHzation  and  development  is  evi- 
dently to  be  upon  mental  and  spiritual  lines.  Na- 
ture, as  I  have  said,  began  to  tend  more  and  more  to 
brains  in  the  early  Tertiary,  —  the  autumn  of  the 
great  year;  her  best  harvest  began  to  mature  then, 
her  grain  began  to  ripen.  Indeed,  this  increased 
cephalization  of  animal  life  in  the  fall  of  the  great 
year  does  suggest  a  kind  of  ripening  process,  the 
turning  of  the  sap  and  milk,  which  had  been  so 
abundant  and  so  riotous  in  the  earlier  period,  into 
fibre  and  fruit  and  seed. 

May  it  not  be  that  that  long  and  sultry  spring  and 
summer  of  the  earth's  early  history,  a  time  prob- 
ably longer  than  has  since  elapsed,  played  a  part 
in  the  development  of  life  analogous  to  that  played 
by  our  spring  and  summer,  making  it  opulent,  varied, 
gigantic,  and  making  possible  the  condensation 
and  refinement  that  came  with  man  in  the  recent 
period.'^ 

22 


THE  LONG  ROAD 

The  earth  is  a  pretty  big  apple,  and  the  solar  tree 
upon  which  it  hangs  is  a  pretty  big  tree,  but  why 
may  it  not  have  gone  through  a  kind  of  ripening 
process  for  all  that?  its  elements  becoming  less  crude 
and  acrid,  and  better  suited  to  sustain  the  higher 
forms,  as  the  eons  passed? 

At  any  rate,  the  results  seem  to  justify  such  a  fancy. 
The  earth  has  slowly  undergone  a  change  that  may 
fairly  be  called  a  ripening  process;  its  soil  has  deep- 
ened and  mellowed,  its  harsher  features  have  soft- 
ened, more  and  more  color  has  come  to  its  surface, 
the  flowers  have  bloomed,  the  more  succulent  fruits 
have  developed,  the  air  has  cleared,  and  love  and 
benevolence  and  altruism  have  been  born  in  the 
world. 

V 

Life  had  to  creep  or  swim  long  before  it  could 
walk,  and  it  walked  long  before  it  could  fly;  it  had 
feeling  long  before  it  had  eyes,  and  it  no  doubt  had 
eyes  long  before  it  could  hear  or  smell.  It  was  ca- 
pable of  motion  long  before  it  had  limbs;  it  assimi- 
lated food  long  before  it  had  a  mouth  or  a  stomach. 
It  had  a  digestive  tract  long  before  it  had  a  spinal 
cord;  it  had  nerve  ganglia  long  before  it  had  a  well- 
defined  brain.  It  had  sensation  long  before  it  had 
perception;  it  was  unisexual  long  before  it  was  bi- 
sexual; it  had  a  shell  long  before  it  had  a  skeleton; 
it  had  instinct  and  reflex  action  long  before  it  had 
self -consciousness  and  reason.    Always    from  the 

23 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

lower  to  the  higher,  from  the  simple  to  the  more 
complex,  and  always  slowly,  gently. 

Life  has  had  its  foetal  stage,  its  stage  of  infancy, 
and  childhood,  and  maturity,  and  will  doubtless 
have  its  old  age.    It  took  it  millions  upon  millions  of 
years  to  get  out  of  the  sea  upon  dry  land;  and  it 
took  it  more  millions  upon  dry  land,  or  since  the 
Carboniferous  age,  when  the  air  probably  first  be- 
gan to  be  breathable,  —  all  the  vast  stretch  of  the 
Secondary  and  Tertiary  ages,  —  to  get  upright  and 
develop  a  reasoning  brain,  and  reach  the  estate  of 
man.  Step  by  step,  in  orderly  succession,  does  crea- 
tion move.    In  the  rising  and  in  the  setting  of  the 
sun  one  may  see  how  nature's  great  processes  steal 
upon   us,  silently   and   unnoticed,   yet  alwaj^s   in 
sequence,  stage  succeeding  stage,  one  thing  following 
from  another,  the  spectacular  moment  of  sunset  fol- 
lowing inevitably  from  the  quiet,  unnoticed  sinking 
of  the  sun  in  the  west,  or  the  startling  flash  of  his 
rim  above  the  eastern  horizon  only  the  fulfillment  of 
the  promise  of  the  dawn.    All  is  development  and 
succession,  and  man  is  but  the  sunrise  of  the  dawn 
of  life  in  Cambrian  or  Silurian  times,  and  is  linked  to 
that  time  as  one  hour  of  the  day  is  linked  to  another. 

The  more  complex  life  became,  the  more  rapidly 
it  seems  to  have  developed,  till  it  finally  makes 
rapid  strides  to  reach  man.  One  seems  to  see  Life, 
like  a  traveler  on  the  road,  going  faster  and  faster 
as  it  nears  its  goal.    Those  long  ages  of  unicellular 

24 


THE  LONG  ROAD 

life  in  the  old  seas,  how  immense  they  appear  to  have 
been;  then  how  the  age  of  invertebrates  dragged 
on,  millions  upon  millions  of  years;  then  the  age  of 
fishes;  the  Palaeozoic  age,  how  vast  —  put  by 
Haeckel  at  thirty-four  millions  of  years,  adding 
rock  strata  forty-one  thousand  feet  thick ;  then  the 
Mesozoic  or  third  period,  the  age  of  reptiles,  eleven 
million  years,  with  strata  twelve  thousand  feet  thick. 
Then  came  the  Csenozoic  age,  or  age  of  mammals, 
three  million  years,  with  strata  thirty -one  hundred 
feet  thick.  The  god  of  life  was  getting  in  a  hurry 
now;  man  was  not  far  off.  A  new  device,  the  pla- 
centa, was  hit  upon  in  this  age,  and  probably  the 
diaphragm  and  the  brain  of  animals,  all  greatly  en- 
larged. Finally  comes  the  Anthropozoic  or  Quater- 
nary age,  the  age  of  man,  three  hundred  thousand 
years,  with  not  much  addition  to  the  sedimentary 
rocks. 

Man  seems  to  be  the  net  result  of  it  all,  of  all  these 
vast  cycles  of  Palaeozoic,  Mesozoic,  and  Csenozoic 
life.  He  is  the  one  drop  finally  distilled  from  the 
vast  weltering  sea  of  lower  organic  forms.  It  looks 
as  if  it  all  had  to  be  before  he  could  be  —  all  the 
delay  and  waste  and  struggle  and  pain  —  all  that 
long  carnival  of  sea  life,  all  that  saturnalia  of  gigan- 
tic forms  upon  the  land  and  in  the  air,  all  that  rising 
and  sinking  of  the  continents,  and  all  that  shovel- 
ing to  and  fro  and  mixing  of  the  soils,  before  the 
world  was  ready  for  him. 

25 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

In  the  early  Tertiary,  millions  of  years  ago,  the 
earth  seems  to  have  been  ripe  for  man.  The  fruits 
and  vegetables  and  the  forest  trees  were  much  as  we 
know  them,  the  animals  that  have  been  most  serv- 
iceable to  us  were  here,  spring  and  summer  and 
fall  and  winter  came  and  went,  evidently  birds  sang, 
insects  hummed,  flowers  bloomed,  fruits  and  grains 
and  nuts  ripened,  and  yet  man  as  man  was  not. 

Under  the  city  of  London  is  a  vast  deposit  of 
clay  in  which  thousands  of  specimens  of  fossil 
fruit  have  been  found  like  our  date,  cocoanut,  areca, 
custard-apple,  gourd,  melon,  coffee,  bean,  pepper, 
and  cotton  plant,  but  no  sign  of  man.  Why  was 
his  development  so  tardy?  What  animal  profited 
by  this  rich  vegetable  life?  The  hope  and  promise 
of  the  human  species  at  that  time  probably  slept  in 
some  lowly  marsupial.  Man  has  gathered  up  into 
himself,  as  he  traveled  his  devious  way,  all  the  best 
powers  of  the  animal  kingdom  he  has  passed  through. 
His  brain  supphes  him  with  all  that  his  body  lacks, 
and  more.  His  specialization  is  in  this  highly  de- 
veloped organ.  It  is  this  that  separates  him  so 
widely  from  all  other  animals. 

Man  has  no  wings,  and  yet  he  can  soar  above  the 
clouds;  he  is  not  swift  of  foot,  and  yet  he  can  out- 
speed  the  fleetest  hound  or  horse;  he  has  but  feeble 
weapons  in  his  organization,  and  yet  he  can  slay 
or  master  all  the  great  beasts;  his  eye  is  not  so  sharp 
as  that  of  the  eagle  or  the  vulture,  and  yet  he  can  see 

26 


THE   LONG  ROAD 

into  the  farthest  depths  of  siderial  space;  he  has 
only  very  feeble  occult  powers  of  communication 
with  his  fellows,  and  yet  he  can  talk  around  the 
world  and  send  his  voice  across  mountains  and 
deserts;  his  hands  are  weak  things  beside  a  lion's 
paw  or  an  elephant's  trunk,  and  yet  he  can  move 
mountains  and  stay  rivers  and  set  bounds  to  the 
wildest  seas.  His  dog  can  out-smell  him  and  out- 
run him  and  out-bite  him,  and  yet  his  dog  looks  up 
to  him  as  to  a  god.  He  has  erring  reason  in  place  of 
unerring  instinct,  and  yet  he  has  changed  the  face  of 
the  planet. 

Without  the  specialization  of  the  lower  animals, 
—  their  wonderful  adaptation  to  particular  ends,  — 
their  tools,  their  weapons,  their  strength,  their 
speed,  man  yet  makes  them  all  his  servants.  His 
brain  is  more  than  a  match  for  all  the  special  ad- 
vantages nature  has  given  them.  The  one  gift  of 
reason  makes  him  supreme  in  the  world. 


VI 

We  have  a  stake  in  all  the  past  life  of  the  globe. 
It  is  no  doubt  a  scientific  fact  that  your  existence 
and  mine  were  involved  in  the  first  cell  that  ap- 
peared, that  the  first  zoophyte  furthered  our  for- 
tunes, that  the  first  worm  gave  us  a  lift.  Great  good 
luck  came  to  us  when  the  first  pair  of  eyes  were  in- 
vented, probably  by  the  trilobite  back  in  Silurian 
times;  when  the  first  ear  appeared,  probably  in 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

Carboniferous  times;  when  the  first  pair  of  lungs 
grew  out  of  a  fish's  air-bladder,  probably  in  Triassic 
times;  when  the  first  four-chambered  heart  was 
developed  and  double  circulation  established,  prob- 
ably with  the  first  warm-blooded  animal  in  Meso- 
zoic  times. 

These  humble  forms  started  the  brain,  the  nerv- 
ous system,  the  circulation,  sight,  hearing,  smell; 
they  invented  the  liver,  the  kidneys,  the  lungs,  the 
heart,  the  stomach,  and  led  the  way  to  every  organ 
and  power  my  body  and  mind  have  to-day.  I'hey 
were  the  pioneers,  they  were  the  dim  remote  fore- 
bears, they  conserved  and  augmented  the  fund  of 
life  and  passed  it  along. 

All  their  struggles,  their  discipline,  their  battles, 
their  failures,  their  successes,  were  for  you  and  me. 
Man  has  had  the  experience  of  all  the  animals  be- 
low him.  He  has  suffered  and  struggled  as  a  fish, 
he  has  groveled  and  devoured  as  a  reptile,  he  has 
fought  and  triumphed  as  a  quadruped,  he  has  lived 
in  trees  as  a  monkey,  he  has  inhabited  caves  with  the 
wolf  and  the  bear,  he  has  roamed  the  forests  and 
plains  as  a  savage,  he  has  survived  without  fire  or 
clothes  or  weapons  or  tools,  he  has  lived  with  the 
mastodon  and  all  the  saurian  monsters,  he  has  held 
his  own  against  great  odds,  he  has  survived  the  long 
battles  of  the  land  and  the  sea,  he  weathered  the 
ice-sheet  that  overrode  both  hemispheres,  he  has 
seen  many  forms  become  extinct.    In  the  historic 

2S 


THE  LONG  ROAD 

period  he  has  survived  plague  and  pestilence,  and 
want  and  famine.  What  must  he  have  survived  in 
prehistoric  times !  What  must  he  have  had  to  con- 
tend with  as  a  cave-dweller,  as  a  tree-dweller,  as 
a  river-drift  man!  Before  he  had  tools  or  weapons 
what  must  he  have  had  to  contend  with! 

Nature  was  full  of  sap  and  rioted  in  rude  strength 
well  up  to  Quaternary  times,  producing  extravagant 
forms  which  apparently  she  had  no  use  for,  as  she 
has  discontinued  them. 

In  all  these  things  you  and  I  had  our  part  and  lot; 
of  this  prodigal  outpouring  of  life  we  have  reaped 
the  benefit;  amid  these  bizarre  forms  and  this  car- 
nival of  lust  and  power,  the  manward  impulse  was 
nourished  and  forwarded.  In  Eocene  times  nearly 
half  the  mammals  lived  on  other  animals;  it  must 
have  been  an  age  of  great  slaughter.  It  favored  the 
development  of  fleetness  and  cunning,  in  which  we 
too  have  an  interest.  Our  rude  progenitor  was  surely 
there  in  some  form,  and  escaped  the  slaughter.  Then 
or  later  it  is  thought  he  took  to  the  trees  to  escape 
his  enemies,  as  the  rats  in  Jamaica  have  taken  to  the 
trees  to  escape  the  mongoose.  To  his  tree-climbing 
we  probably  owe  our  hand,  with  its  opposing  thumb. 

In  all  his  disguises  he  is  still  our  ancestor.  His 
story  reads  like  a  fairy  book.  Never  did  nimble 
fancy  of  childhood  invent  such  transformations  — 
only  the  transformations  are  so  infinitely  slow,  and 
attended  with  such  struggle  and  suffering.    Strike 

29 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

out  the  element  of  time  and  we  have  before  us  a 
spectacle  more  novel  and  startling  than  any  ho- 
cus-pocus or  legerdemain  that  ever  set  the  crowd 
agape. 

In  every  form  man  has  passed  through,  he  left 
behind  some  old  member  or  power  and  took  on  some 
new.  He  left  his  air-bladder  and  his  gills  and  his  fins 
with  the  fishes;  he  got  his  lungs  from  the  dipno- 
ans,  the  precursors  of  the  amphibians,  and  from 
these  last  he  got  his  four  limbs;  he  left  some  part  of 
his  anatomy  with  the  reptile,  and  took  something 
in  exchange,  probably  his  flexible  neck.  Somewhere 
along  his  line  he  picked  up  the  four-chambered 
heart,  the  warm  blood,  the  placenta,  the  diaphragm, 
the  plantigrade  foot,  the  mammary  glands  —  indeed, 
what  has  he  not  picked  up  on  the  long  road  of  his 
many  transformations?  He  left  some  of  his  super- 
fluous forty-four  teeth  with  his  ancestral  quadru- 
mana  of  Eocene  times,  and  kept  thirty-two.  He 
picked  up  his  brain  somewhere  on  the  road,  prob- 
ably far  back  in  Palaeozoic  times,  but  how  has  he 
developed  and  enlarged  it,  till  it  is  now  the  one  su- 
preme thing  in  the  world!  His  fear,  his  cunning,  his 
anger,  his  treachery,  his  hoggishness  —  all  his  ani- 
mal passions  —  he  brought  with  him  from  his  animal 
ancestors;  but  his  moral  and  spiritual  nature,  his 
altruism,  his  veneration,  his  religious  emotions, 
his  aesthetic  perceptions  —  have  come  to  him  as 
a  man,  supplementing  his  lower  nature,  as  it  were, 

30 


THE   LONG  ROAD 

with  another  order  of  senses  —  a  finer  sight,  a  finer 
touch,  wrought  in  him  by  the  disciphne  of  Hfe,  and 
the  wonder  of  the  world  about  him,  beginning  de 
novo  in  him  only  as  the  wing  began  de  novo  in  the 
bird,  or  the  color  began  de  novo  in  the  flower — ■ 
struck  out  from  preexisting  potentialities.  The  fa- 
ther of  the  eye  is  the  light,  and  the  father  of  the  ear 
is  the  vibration  of  the  air,  but  the  father  of  man's 
higher  nature  is  a  question  of  quite  another  sort. 
About  the  only  thing  in  his  physical  make-up  that 
man  can  call  his  own  is  his  chin.  None  of  the  orders 
below  him  seem  to  have  what  can  strictly  be  called 
a  chin. 

Man  owes  his  five  toes  and  five  fingers  to  the 
early  amphibians  of  the  sub-carboniferous  times. 
The  first  tangible  evidence  of  these  five  toes  upon 
the  earth  is,  to  me,  very  interesting.  The  earliest 
record  of  them  that  I  have  heard  of  is  furnished 
by  a  slab  of  shale  from  Pennsylvania,  upon  which, 
while  it  was  yet  soft  mud,  our  first  five-toed  ances- 
tor had  left  the  imprint  of  his  four  feet.  He  was  evi- 
dently a  small,  short-legged  gentleman  with  a  stride 
of  only  about  thirteen  inches,  and  he  carried  a  tail 
instead  of  a  cane.  He  was  probably  taking  a  stroll 
upon  the  shores  of  that  vast  Mediterranean  Sea  that 
occupied  all  the  interior  of  the  continent  when  he 
crossed  his  mud  flat.  It  was  raining  that  morning  — 
how  many  million  years  ago?  —  as  we  know  from  the 
imprint  of  the  raindrops  upon  the  mud.    Probably 

31 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

the  shower  did  not  cause  him  to  quicken  his  pace, 
as  amphibians  rather  Hke  the  rain.  Just  what  his 
immediate  forbears  were  hke,  or  what  the  forms 
were  that  connected  him  with  the  fishes,  we  shall 
probably  never  know.  Doubtless  the  great  book 
of  the  rocky  strata  somewhere  holds  the  secret,  if 
we  are  ever  lucky  enough  to  open  it  at  the  right 
place.  How  many  other  secrets,  that  evolutionists 
would  like  to  know,  those  torn  and  crumpled  leaves 
hold! 

It  is  something  to  me  to  know  that  it  rained  that 
day  when  our  amphibian  ancestor  ventured  out. 
The  weather  was  beginning  to  get  organized  also, 
and  settling  down  to  business.  It  had  got  beyond 
the  state  of  perpetual  mist  and  fog  of  the  earlier 
ages,  and  the  raindrops  were  playing  their  parts. 
Yet,  from  all  the  evidence  we  have,  we  infer  that  the 
climate  was  warm  and  very  humid,  like  that  of  a 
greenhouse,  and  that  vegetation,  mostly  giant  ferns 
and  rushes  and  lycopods,  was  very  rank,  but  there 
was  no  grass,  or  moss,  no  deciduous  trees,  or  flowers, 
or  fruit,  as  we  know  these  things. 

A  German  anatomist  says  that  we  have  the  ves- 
tiges of  one  hundred  and  eighty  organs  which  have 
stuck  to  us  from  our  animal  ancestors,  —  now  use- 
less, or  often  worse  than  useless,  like  the  vermiform 
appendix.  Eleven  of  these  superannuated  and  ob- 
solete organs  we  bring  from  the  fishes,  four  from 
amphibians  and  reptiles.  The  external  ear  is  a  ves- 

32 


THE  LONG  ROAD 

tige  —  of  no  use  any  more.  Our  dread  of  snakes  we 
no  doubt  inherited  from  our  simian  ancestors. 

How  life  refined  and  humanized  as  time  went  on, 
sobered  down  and  became  more  meditative,  keep- 
ing step,  no  doubt,  with  the  amelioration  of  the  soil 
out  of  which  all  life  finally  comes.  Life's  bank  ac- 
count in  the  soil  was  constantly  increasing;  more 
and  more  of  the  inorganic  was  wrought  up  into  the 
organic;  the  value  of  every  clod  underfoot  was  raised. 
The  riot  of  gigantic  forms  ceased,  and  they  became 
ashes.  The  giant  and  uncouth  vegetation  ceased, 
and  left  ashes  or  coal.  The  beech,  the  maple,  the 
oak,  the  olive,  the  palm  came  in.  The  giant  sea- 
serpents  disappeared;  the  horse,  the  ox,  the  swine, 
the  dog,  the  quail,  the  dove  came  in.  The  placental 
mammals  developed.  The  horse  grew  in  size  and 
beauty.  When  we  first  come  upon  his  trail,  he  is  a 
four-hoof- toed  animal  no  larger  than  a  fox.  Later 
on  we  find  him  the  size  of  a  sheep  with  one  of  his 
toes  gone;  still  later  —  many  hundred  thousand 
years,  no  doubt  —  we  find  him  the  size  of  a  donkey, 
with  still  fewer  toes,  and  so  on  till  we  reach  the 
superb  creature  we  know. 

The  creative  energy  seems  to  have  worked  in 
geologic  time  and  in  the  geologic  field  just  as  it 
works  here  and  now,  in  yonder  vineyard  or  in  yonder 
marsh,  —  blindly,  experimentally,  but  persistently 
and  successfully.  The  winged  seeds  find  their  proper 
soil,  because  they  search  in  every  direction;  the 

S3 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

climbing  vines  find  their  support,  because  in  the 
same  blind  way  they  feel  in  all  directions.  Plants 
and  animals  and  races  of  men  grope  their  way  to 
new  fields,  to  new  powers,  to  new  inventions. 

Indeed,  how  like  an  inventor  Nature  has  worked, 
constantly  improving  her  models,  adding  to  and 
changing  as  experience  would  seem  to  dictate!  She 
has  developed  her  higher  and  more  complex  forms 
as  man  has  developed  his  printing-press,  or  steam- 
engine,  from  rude,  simple  beginnings.  From  the 
two-chambered  heart  of  the  fish  she  made  the  treble- 
chambered  heart  of  the  frog,  and  then  the  four- 
chambered  heart  of  the  mammal.  The  first  mam- 
mary gland  had  no  nipples;  the  milk  oozed  out  and 
was  licked  off  by  the  young.  The  nipple  was  a  great 
improvement,  as  was  the  power  of  suckling  in  the 
young. 

Experimenting  and  experimenting  endlessly,  tak- 
ing a  forward  step  only  when  compelled  by  neces- 
sity,—  this  is  the  way  of  Nature,  —  experimenting 
with  eyes,  with  ears,  with  teeth,  with  limbs,  with 
feet,  with  toes,  with  wings,  with  bladders  and  lungs, 
with  scales  and  armors,  hitting  upon  the  back- 
bone only  after  long  trials  with  other  forms,  hitting 
upon  the  movable  eye  only  after  long  ages  of  other 
eyes,  hitting  on  the  mammal  only  after  long  ages 
of  egg-laying  vertebrates,  hitting  on  the  placenta 
only  recently, —  experimenting  all  around  the  circle, 
discarding  and  inventing,  taking  ages  to  perfect 

34 


THE  LONG  ROAD 

the  nervous  system,  ages  and  ages  to  develop  the 
centralized  gangHa,  the  brain.  First  life  was  Hke 
a  rabble,  a  mob,  without  thought  or  head,  then  slowly 
organization  went  on,  as  it  were,  from  family  to 
clan,  from  clan  to  tribe,  from  tribe  to  nation,  or 
centralized  government  —  the  brain  of  man  —  all 
parts  duly  subordinated  and  directed,  —  millions 
of  cells  organized  and  working  on  different  functions 
to  one  grand  end,  —  cooperation,  fraternization, 
division  of  labor,  altruism,  etc. 

The  cell  was  the  first  invention;  it  is  the  unit  of 
life,  —  a  speck  of  protoplasm  with  a  nucleus.  To 
educate  this  cell  till  it  could  combine  with  its  fellows 
and  form  the  higher  animals  seems  to  have  been  the 
aim  of  the  creative  energy.  First  the  cell,  then  com- 
binations of  cells,  then  combinations  of  combina- 
tions, then  more  and  more  complex  combinations 
till  the  body  of  man  is  reached,  where  endless  con- 
fraternities of  cells,  all  with  different  functions, 
working  to  build  and  sustain  different  organs, — 
brain,  heart,  liver,  muscles,  nerves,  —  yet  all  work- 
ing together  for  one  grand  end  —  the  body  and 
mind  of  man.  In  their  last  analysis,  all  made  up  of 
the  same  cells  —  their  combinations  and  organiza- 
tion making  the  different  forms. 

Evolution  touches  all  forms  but  tarries  with  few. 
Many  are  called  but  few  are  chosen  —  chosen  to 
lead  the  man-impulse  upward.  Myriads  of  forms 
are  left  behind,  like  driftwood  caught  in  the  eddies 

35 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

of  a  current.  The  clam  has  always  remained  a  clam, 
the  oyster  remained  an  oyster.  The  cockroach  is 
about  the  same  creature  to-day  that  it  was  untold 
seons  ago;  so  is  the  shark,  and  so  are  many  other 
forms  of  marine  life.  Often  where  old  species  have 
gone  out  and  new  come  in,  no  progress  has  been 

made. 

Evolution  concentrates  along  certain  lines.  The 
biological  tree  behaves  like  another  tree,  branches 
die  and  drop  off  (species  become  extinct),  others 
mature  and  remain,  while  some  central  shoot  pushes 
upward.  Many  of  the  huge  reptilian  and  mammalian 
branches  perished  in  comparatively  late  times. 

As  nothing  is  more  evident  than  that  the  same 
measure  of  life  or  of  vital  energy  —  power  of  growth, 
power  of  resistance,  power  of  reproduction  —  is  not 
meted  out  equally  to  all  the  individuals  of  a  species, 
or  to  all  species,  so  it  is  evident  that  this  power  of 
progressive  development  is  not  meted  out  equally  to 
all  races  of  mankind,  or  to  all  of  the  individuals  of 
the  same  race.  The  central  impulse  of  development 
seems  to  have  come  from  the  East,  in  historic  times 
at  least,  and  to  have  followed  the  line  of  the  Medi- 
terranean, to  have  culminated  in  Europe.  And  this 
progress  has  certainly  been  the  work  of  a  few  minds 
—  minds  exceptionally  endowed. 

For  the  most  part  the  barbarian  races  do  not  pro- 
gress. Their  exceptional  minds  or  characters  do  not 
lead  the  tribes  to  higher  planes  of  thought.   In  all 

36 


THE  LONG  ROAD 

countries  we  still  see  these  barbarous  people  which 
man  in  his  progress  has  left  behind.  Our  civiliza- 
tion is  like  a  field  of  light  that  fades  off  into  shadows 
and  darkness.  There  is  this  margin  of  undeveloped 
humanity  on  all  sides.  Always  has  it  been  so  in 
the  animal  life  of  the  globe;  the  higher  forms  have 
been  pushed  up  from  the  lower,  and  the  lower  have 
remained  and  continued  to  multiply  unchanged. 

It  seems  as  if  some  central  and  cherished  impulse 
had  pushed  on  through  each  form,  and  by  suc- 
cessive steps  had  climbed  from  height  to  height, 
gaining  a  little  here  and  a  little  there,  intensifying 
and  concentrating  as  time  went  on,  very  vague  and 
diffuse  at  first,  embryonic  so  to  speak,  during  the 
first  half  of  the  great  geologic  year,  but  quickening 
more  and  more,  differentiating  more  and  more, 
delayed  and  defeated  many  times,  no  doubt,  yet 
never  destroyed,  leaving  form  after  form  unchanged 
behind  it,  till  it  at  last  reached  its  goal  in  man. 

After  evolution  has  done  all  it  can  do  for  us  toward 
solving  the  mystery  of  creation,  much  remains  un- 
solved. 

Through  evolution  we  see  creation  in  travail- 
pains  for  millions  of  years  to  bring  forth  the  varied 
forms  of  life  as  we  know  them;  but  the  mystery  of 
the  inception  of  this  life,  and  of  the  origin  of  the 
laws  that  have  governed  its  development,  remains. 
What  lies  back  of  it  all?  Who  or  what  planted  the 
germ  of  the  biological  tree,  and  predetermined  all 

37 


TIME  AND   CHANGE 

its  branches?  What  determined  one  branch  to 
eventuate  in  man,  another  in  the  dog,  the  horse, 
the  bird,  or  the  reptile? 

From  the  finite  or  human  point  of  view  we  feel 
compelled  to  say  some  vaster  being  or  intelligence 
must  have  had  the  thought  of  all  these  things  from 
the  beginning  or  before  the  beginning. 

It  is  quite  impossible  for  me  to  believe  that  for- 
tuitous variation  —  variation  all  around  the  circle — 
could  have  resulted  in  the  evolution  of  man.  There 
must  have  been  a  predetermined  tendency  to  varia- 
tion in  certain  directions.  To  introduce  chance  into 
the  world  is  to  introduce  chaos.  No  more  would  the 
waters  of  the  interiors  of  the  continents  find  their 
way  to  the  sea,  were  there  not  a  slant  in  that  direc- 
tion, than  could  haphazard  variation,  though  checked 
and  controlled  by  natural  selection,  result  in  the 
production  of  the  race  of  man.  This  view  may  be 
only  the  outcome  of  our  inevitable  anthropomor- 
phism which  we  cannot  escape  from,  no  matter  how 
deep  we  dive  or  high  we  soar. 


II 

THE  DIVINE  ABYSS 


IN  making  the  journey  to  the  great  Southwest,  — 
Colorado,  New  Mexico,  and  Arizona,  —  if  one 
does  not  know  his  geology,  he  is  pretty  sure  to  wish 
he  did,  there  is  so  much  geology  scattered  over  all 
these  Southwestern  landscapes,  crying  aloud  to  be 
read.  The  book  of  earthly  revelation,  as  shown  by 
the  great  science,  lies  wide  open  in  that  land,  as  it 
does  in  few  other  places  on  the  globe.  Its  leaves 
fairly  flutter  in  the  wind,  and  the  print  is  so  large 
that  he  who  runs  on  the  California  Limited  may 
read  it.  Not  being  able  to  read  it  at  all,  or  not  taking 
any  interest  in  it,  is  like  going  to  Rome  or  Egypt  or 
Jerusalem,  knowing  nothing  of  the  history  of  those 
lands. 

Of  course,  we  have  just  as  much  geology  in  the 
East  and  Middle  West,  but  the  books  are  closed 
and  sealed,  as  it  were,  by  the  enormous  lapse  of  time 
since  these  portions  of  the  continent  became  dry 
land.  The  eroding  and  degrading  forces  have  ages 
since  passed  the  meridian  of  their  day's  work,  and 
grass  and  verdure  hide  their  footsteps.  But  in  the 
great  West  and  Southwest,  the  gods  of  erosion  and 

39 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

degradation  seem  yet  in  the  heat  and  burden  of  the 
day's  toil.  Their  unfinished  landscapes  meet  the  eye 
on  every  hand.  Many  of  the  mountains  look  as  if 
they  were  blocked  out  but  yesterday,  and  one  sees 
vast  naked  flood-plains,  and  painted  deserts  and 
bad  lands  and  dry  lake-bottoms,  that  suggest  a 
world  yet  in  the  making. 

Some  force  has  scalped  the  hills,  ground  the  moun- 
tains, strangled  the  rivers,  channeled  the  plains,  laid 
bare  the  succession  of  geologic  ages,  stripping  off 
formation  after  formation  like  a  garment,  or  cutting 
away  the  strata  over  hundreds  of  square  miles,  as 
we  pry  a  slab  from  a  rock  —  and  has  done  it  all  but 
yesterday.  If  we  break  the  slab  in  the  prying,  and 
thus  secure  only  part  of  it,  leaving  an  abrupt  jagged 
edge  on  the  part  that  remains,  we  have  still  a  better 
likeness  of  the  work  of  these  great  geologic  quarry- 
men.  But  other  workmen,  invisible  to  our  eyes, 
have  carved  these  jagged  edges  into  novel  and  beau- 
tiful forms. 

The  East  is  old,  old !  the  West,  with  the  exception 
of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  is  of  yesterday  in  compari- 
son. The  Hudson  was  an  ancient  river  before  the 
Mississippi  was  born,  and  the  Catskills  were  being 
slowly  carved  from  a  vast  plateau  while  the  rocks 
that  were  to  form  many  of  the  Western  ranges  were 
being  laid  down  as  sediment  in  the  bottom  of  the 
sea.  California  is  yet  in  her  teens,  while  New  Eng- 
land in  comparison  is  an  octogenarian.  Just  as  much 

40 


THE   DIVINE  ABYSS 

geology  in  the  East  as  in  the  West,  did  I  say?  Not 
as  much  visible  geology,  not  as  much  by  many 
chapters  of  earth  history,  not  as  much  by  all  the 
later  formations,  by  most  of  the  Mesozoic  and  Ter- 
tiary deposits.  The  vast  series  of  sedimentary  rocks 
since  the  Carboniferous  age,  to  say  nothing  of  the 
volcanic,  that  make  up  these  periods,  are  largely 
wanting  east  of  the  Mississippi,  except  in  New 
Jersey  and  in  some  of  the  Gulf  States.  They  are 
recent.  They  are  like  the  history  of  our  own  period 
compared  with  that  of  Egypt  and  Judea.  It  is 
mainly  these  later  formations  —  the  Permian,  the 
Jurassic,  the  Triassic,  the  Cretaceous,  the  Eocene, 
—  that  give  the  prevailing  features  to  the  South- 
western landscape  that  so  astonish  Eastern  eyes. 
From  them  come  most  of  the  petrified  remains  of 
that  great  army  of  extinct  reptiles  and  mammals  — 
the  three-toed  horse,  the  sabre-toothed  tiger,  the 
brontosaurus,  the  fin-backed  lizard,  the  imperial 
mammoth,  the  various  dinosaurs,  some  of  them 
gigantic  in  form  and  fearful  in  aspect  —  that  of  late 
years  have  appeared  in  our  museums  and  that  throw 
so  much  light  upon  the  history  of  the  animal  life  of 
the  globe.  Most  of  the  sedimentary  rocks  of  New 
York  and  New  England  were  laid  down  before  these 
creatures  existed. 

Now  I  am  not  going  to  write  an  essay  on  the  geo- 
logy of  the  West,  for  I  really  have  little  first-hand 
knowledge  upon  that  subject,  but  I  would  indicate 

41 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

the  kind  of  interest  in  the  country  I  was  most  con- 
scious of  during  my  recent  trip  to  the  Pacific  Coast 
and  beyond.  Indeed,  quite  a  geologic  fever  raged  in 
me  most  of  the  time.  The  rocks  attracted  me  more 
than  the  birds,  the  sculpturing  of  the  landscapes 
engaged  my  attention  more  than  the  improvements 
of  the  farms  —  what  Nature  had  done  more  than 
what  man  was  doing.  The  purely  scenic  aspects  of 
the  country  are  certainly  remarkable,  and  the 
human  aspects  interesting,  but  underneath  these 
things,  and  striking  through  them,  lies  a  vast 
world  of  time  and  change  that  to  me  is  still  more 
remarkable,  and  still  more  interesting.  I  could  not 
look  out  of  the  car  windows  without  seeing  the 
spectre  of  geologic  time  stalking  across  the  hills 
and  plains. 

As  one  leaves  the  prairie  States  and  nears  the  great 
Southwest,  he  finds  Nature  in  a  new  mood  —  she  is 
dreaming  of  canons;  both  cliffs  and  soil  have  canon 
stamped  upon  them,  so  that  your  eye,  if  alert,  is 
slowly  prepared  for  the  wonders  of  rock-carving  it 
is  to  see  on  the  Colorado.  The  canon  form  seems 
inherent  in  soil  and  rock.  The  channels  of  the  little 
streams  are  canons,  vertical  sides  of  adobe  soil,  as 
deep  as  they  are  broad,  rectangle  grooves  in  the 
ground. 

Through  all  this  arid  region  nature  is  abrupt,  an- 
gular, and  sudden  —  the  plain  squarely  abutting  the 
cliff,  the  cliff  walling  the  canon;  the  dry  water-course 

42 


THE  DIVINE  ABYSS 

sunk  in  the  plain  like  a  carpenter's  groove  into  a 
plank.  Cloud  and  sky  look  the  same  as  at  home, 
but  the  earth  is  a  new  earth  —  new  geologically,  and 
new  in  the  lines  of  its  landscapes.  It  seems  by  the 
forms  she  develops  that  Nature  must  use  tools  that 
she  long  since  discarded  in  the  East.  She  works  as  if 
with  the  square  and  the  saw  and  the  compass,  and 
uses  implements  that  cut  like  chisels  and  moulding- 
planes.  Right  lines,  well-defined  angles,  and  table- 
like tops  of  buttes  and  mesas  alternate  with  perfect 
curves,  polished  domes,  carved  needles,  and  fluted 
escarpments. 

In  the  features  of  our  older  landscapes  there  is 
little  or  nothing  that  suggests  architectural  forms 
or  engineering  devices;  in  the  Far  West  one  sees 
such  forms  and  devices  everywhere. 

In  visiting  the  Petrified  Forests  in  northern  Ari- 
zona we  stood  on  the  edge  of  a  great  rolling  plain 
and  looked  down  upon  a  wide,  deeply  eroded  stretch 
of  country  below  us  that  suggested  a  vast  army 
encampment,  covered  as  it  was  with  great  dome- 
shaped,  tent-like  mounds  of  a  light  terra-cotta  color, 
with  open  spaces  like  streets  or  avenues  between 
them.  There  were  hundreds  or  thousands  of  these 
earthy  tents  stretching  away  for  twenty-five  miles. 
Along  the  horizon  was  a  gigantic  stockade  of  red, 
rounded  pillars,  or  a  solid  line  of  mosque-like  temples. 
How  unreal,  how  spectral  it  all  seemed !  Not  a  sound 
or  sign  of  life  in  the  whole  painted  solitude  —  a  dcx 

43 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

serted  camp,  or  one  upon  which  the  silence  of  death 
had  fallen.  Here,  in  Carboniferous  times,  grew  the 
gigantic  fern-like  trees,  the  Sigillaria  and  Lepido- 
dendron,  whose  petrified  trunks,  for  aeons  buried 
beneath  the  deposit  of  the  Permian  seas,  and  then, 
during  other  aeons,  slowly  uncovered  by  the  gentle 
action  of  the  eroding  rains,  we  saw  scattered  on  the 
ground. 

You  first  see  Nature  beginning  to  form  the  cafion 
habit  in  Colorado  and  making  preliminary  studies 
for  her  masterpiece,  the  Grand  Canon.  Huge 
square  towers  and  truncated  cones  and  needles  and 
spires  break  the  horizon-lines.  Here  all  her  water- 
courses, wet  or  dry,  are  deep  grooves  in  the  soil,  with 
striking  and  pretty  carvings  and  modelings  adorn- 
ing their  vertical  sides.  In  the  railway  cuts  you  see 
the  same  effects  —  miniature  domes  and  turrets  and 
other  canon  features  carved  out  by  the  rains.  The 
soil  is  massive  and  does  not  crumble  like  ours  and 
seek  the  angle  of  repose;  it  gives  way  in  masses  like 
a  brick  wall.  It  is  architectural  soil,  it  seeks  ap- 
proximately the  right  angle  —  the  level  plain  or 
the  vertical  wall.  It  erodes  easily  under  running 
water,  but  it  does  not  slide;  sand  and  clay  are  in 
such  proportions  as  to  make  a  brittle  but  not  a 
friable  soil. 

Before  you  are  out  of  Colorado,  you  begin  to  see 
these  novel  architectural  features  on  the  horizon- 
line  —  the  canon  turned  bottom  side  up,  as  it  were. 

44 


THE   DIVINE  ABYSS 

In  New  Mexico,  the  canon  habit  of  the  erosion 
forces  is  still  more  pronounced.  The  mountain-lines 
are  often  as  architectural  in  the  distance,  or  arbi- 
trary, as  the  sky-line  of  a  city.  You  may  see  what 
you  half  persuade  yourself  is  a  huge  brick  building 
notching  the  horizon,  —  an  asylum,  a  seminary,  a 
hotel,  —  but  it  is  only  a  fragment  of  red  sandstone, 
carved  out  by  wind  and  rain. 

Presently  the  high  colors  of  the  rocks  appear  — 
high  cliffs  with  terra-cotta  fagades,  and  a  new  look 
in  the  texture  of  the  rocks,  a  soft,  beaming,  less 
frowning  expression,  and  colored  as  if  by  the  Western 
sunsets.  We  are  looking  upon  much  younger  rocks 
geologically  than  we  see  at  home,  and  they  have  the 
tints  and  texture  of  youth.  The  landscape  and 
the  mountains  look  young,  because  they  look  un- 
finished, like  a  house  half  up.  The  workmen  have 
but  just  knocked  off  work  to  go  to  dinner;  their 
great  trenches,  their  freshly  opened  quarries,  their 
huge  dumps,  their  foundations,  their  cyclopean 
masonry,  their  half -finished  structures  breaking  the 
horizon-lines,  their  square  gashes  through  the  moun- 
tains, —  all  impress  the  eyes  of  a  traveler  from  the 
eastern  part  of  the  continent,  where  the  earth- 
building  and  earth-carving  forces  finished  their 
work  ages  ago. 


45 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

II 

Hence  it  is  that  when  one  reaches  the  Grand 
Canon  of  the  Colorado,  if  he  has  kept  his  eyes  and 
mind  open,  he  is  prepared  to  see  striking  and  unusual 
things.  But  he  cannot  be  fully  prepared  for  just 
what  he  does  see,  no  matter  how  many  pictures  of 
it  he  may  have  seen,  or  how  many  descriptions  of  it 
he  may  have  read. 

A  friend  of  mine  who  took  a  lively  interest  in  my 
Western  trip  wrote  me  that  he  wished  he  could  have 
been  present  with  his  kodak  when  we  first  looked 
upon  the  Grand  Canon.  Did  he  think  he  could 
have  got  a  picture  of  our  souls  ?  His  camera  would 
have  shown  him  only  our  silent,  motionless  forms 
as  we  stood  transfixed  by  that  first  view  of  the  stu- 
pendous spectacle.  Words  do  not  come  readily  to 
one's  lips,  or  gestures  to  one's  body,  in  the  presence 
of  such  a  scene.  One  of  my  companions  said  that 
the  first  thing  that  came  into  her  mind  was  the  old 
text,  "Be  still,  and  know  that  I  am  God."  To  be 
still  on  such  an  occasion  is  the  easiest  thing  in  the 
world,  and  to  feel  the  surge  of  solemn  and  reveren- 
tial emotions  is  equally  easy;  is,  indeed,  almost  in- 
evitable. The  immensity  of  the  scene,  its  tranquil- 
lity, its  order,  its  strange,  new  beauty,  and  the 
monumental  character  of  its  many  forms  —  all  these 
tend  to  beget  in  the  beholder  an  attitude  of  silent 
wonder  and  solemn  admiration.     I  wished  at  the 

46 


THE  DIVINE  ABYSS 

moment  that  we  might  have  been  alone  with  the 
glorious  spectacle,  —  that  we  had  hit  upon  an  hour 
when  the  public  had  gone  to  dinner.  The  smoking 
and  joking  tourists  sauntering  along  in  apparent 
indifference,  or  sitting  with  their  backs  to  the  great 
geologic  drama,  annoyed  me.  I  pity  the  person  who 
can  gaze  upon  the  spectacle  unmoved.  Some  are 
actually  terrified  by  it.  I  was  told  of  a  strong  man, 
an  eminent  lawyer  from  a  Western  city,  who  literally 
fell  to  the  earth  at  the  first  view,  and  could  not 
again  be  induced  to  look  upon  it.  I  saw  a  woman 
prone  upon  the  ground  near  the  brink  at  Hopi  Point, 
weeping  silently  and  long;  but  from  what  she  after- 
ward told  me  I  know  it  was  not  from  terror  or  sor- 
row, but  from  the  overpowering  gladness  of  the  in- 
effable beauty  and  harmony  of  the  scene.  It  moved 
her  like  the  grandest  music.  Her  inebriate  soul 
could  find  relief  only  in  tears. 

Harriet  Monroe  was  so  wrought  up  by  the  first 
view  that  she  says  she  had  to  fight  against  the  de- 
sperate temptation  to  fling  herself  down  into  the  soft 
abyss,  and  thus  redeem  the  affront  which  the  very 
beating  of  her  heart  had  offered  to  the  inviolable 
solitude.  Charles  Dudley  Warner  said  of  it,  "I  ex- 
perienced for  a  moment  an  indescribable  terror  of 
nature,  a  confusion  of  mind,  a  fear  to  be  alone  in 
such  a  presence." 

It  is  beautiful,  oh,  how  beautiful!  but  it  is  a 
beauty  that  awakens  a  feeling  of  solemnity  and  awe. 

47 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

We  call  it  the  "Divine  Abyss."  It  seems  as  much 
of  heaven  as  of  earth.  Of  the  many  descriptions  of 
it,  none  seems  adequate.  To  rave  over  it,  or  to  pour 
into  it  a  torrent  of  superlatives,  is  of  little  avail.  My 
companion  came  nearer  the  mark  when  she  quietly 
repeated  from  Revelation,  "And  he  carried  me  away 
in  the  spirit  to  a  great  and  high  mountain,  and 
shewed  me  that  great  city,  the  holy  Jerusalem."  It 
does,  indeed,  suggest  a  far-off,  half -sacred  antiquity, 
some  greater  Jerusalem,  Egypt,  Babylon,  or  India. 
We  speak  of  it  as  a  scene:  it  is  more  like  a  vision, 
so  foreign  is  it  to  all  other  terrestrial  spectacles, 
and  so  surpassingly  beautiful. 

To  ordinary  folk  the  sight  is  so  extraordinary, 
so  unlike  everything  one's  experience  has  yielded, 
and  so  unlike  the  results  of  the  usual  haphazard 
working  of  the  blind  forces  of  nature,  that  I  did  not 
wonder  when  people  whom  I  met  on  the  rim  asked 
me  what  I  supposed  did  all  this.  I  could  even  sym- 
pathize with  the  remark  of  an  old  woman  visitor 
who  is  reported  to  have  said  that  she  thought  they 
had  built  the  canon  too  near  the  hotel.  The  enorm- 
ous cleavage  which  the  cafion  shows,  the  abrupt 
drop  from  the  brink  of  thousands  of  feet,  the  sheer 
faces  of  perpendicular  walls  of  dizzy  height,  give  at 
first  the  impression  that  it  is  all  the  work  of  some 
titanic  quarryman,  who  must  have  removed  cubic 
miles  of  strata  as  we  remove  cubic  yards  of  earth. 

Go  out  to  Hopi  Point  or  O'Neil's  Point,  and,  as 

48 


THE   DIVINE  ABYSS 

you  emerge  from  the  woods,  you  get  a  glimpse  of  a 
blue  or  rose-purple  gulf  opening  before  you.    The 
solid  ground  ceases  suddenly,  and  an  aerial  perspec- 
tive, vast  and  alluring,  takes  its  place;  another  hea- 
ven, countersunk  in  the  earth,  transfixes  you  on  the 
brink.  "  Great  God ! "  I  can  fancy  the  first  beholder 
of  it  saying,  *'what  is  this?   Do  I  behold  the  trans- 
figuration of  the  earth?  Has  the  solid  ground  melted 
into  thin  air?    Is  there  a  firmament  below  as  well  as 
above?   Has  the  earth  veil  at  last  been  torn  aside, 
and  the  red  heart  of  the  globe  been  laid  bare?"    If 
this  first  witness  was  not  at  once  overcome  by  the 
beauty  of  the  earthly  revelation  before  him,  or  terri- 
fied by  its  strangeness  and  power,  he  must  have  stood 
long,  awed,  spellbound,  speechless  with  astonish- 
ment, and  thrilled  with  delight.   He  may  have  seen 
vast  and  glorious  prospects  from  mountain-tops,  he 
may  have  looked  down  upon  the  earth  and  seen  it 
unroll  like  a  map  before  him;  but  he  had  never  be- 
fore looked  into  the  earth  as  through  a  mighty  win- 
dow or  open  door,  and  beheld  depths  and  gulfs  of 
space,  with  their  atmospheric  veils  and  illusions  and 
vast  perspectives,  such  as  he  had  seen  from  moun- 
tain-summits, but  with   a  wealth   of   color   and  a 
suggestion   of  architectural   and   monumental   re- 
mains, and  a  strange,  almost  unearthly  beauty,  such 
as  no  mountain- view  could  ever  have  afforded  him. 
Three  features  of  the  canon  strike  one  at  once :  its 
unparalleled  magnitude,  its  architectural  forms  and 

49 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

suggestions,  and  its  opulence  of  color  eflFects  —  a 
chasm  nearly  a  mile  deep  and  from  ten  to  twenty 
miles  wide,  in  which  Niagara  would  be  only  as  a 
picture  upon  your  walls,  in  which  the  Pyramids, 
seen  from  the  rim,  would  appear  only  like  large 
tents,  in  which  the  largest  building  upon  the  earth 
would  dwindle  to  insignificant  proportions.  There 
are  amphitheatres  and  mighty  aisles  eight  miles 
long  and  three  or  four  miles  wide  and  three  or  four 
thousand  feet  deep.  There  are  room-like  spaces  eight 
hundred  feet  high;  there  are  well-defined  alcoves 
with  openings  a  mile  wide;  there  are  niches  six  hun- 
dred feet  high  overhung  by  arched  lintels ;  there  are 
pinnacles  and  rude  statues  from  one  hundred  to  two 
hundred  feet  high.  Here  I  am  running  at  once  into 
allusions  to  the  architectural  features  and  sugges- 
tions of  the  canon,  which  must  play  a  prominent 
part  in  all  faithful  attempts  to  describe  it.  There 
are  huge,  truncated  towers,  vast,  horizontal  mould- 
ings; there  is  the  semblance  of  balustrades  on  the 
summit  of  a  noble  fagade.  In  one  of  the  immense 
halls  we  saw,  on  an  elevated  platform,  the  outlines 
of  three  enormous  chairs,  fifty  feet  or  more  high, 
and  behind  and  above  them  the  suggestion  of  three 
more  chairs  in  partial  ruin.  Indeed,  there  is  such 
an  opulence  of  architectural  forms  in  this  divine 
abyss  as  one  has  never  before  dreamed  of  see- 
ing wrought  by  the  blind  forces  of  nature.  These 
forces  have  here  foreshadowed  all  the  noblest  archi- 

50 


THE  DIVINE  ABYSS 

lecture  of  the  world.  Many  of  the  vast  carved  and 
ornamental  masses  which  diversify  the  canon  have 
been  fitly  named  temples,  as  Shiva's  Temple,  a  mile 
high,  carved  out  of  the  red  Carboniferous  limestone, 
and  remarkably  symmetrical  in  its  outlines.  Near 
it  is  the  Temple  of  Isis,  the  Temple  of  Osiris,  the 
Buddha  Temple,  the  Horus  Temple,  and  the  Pyra- 
mid of  Cheops.  Farther  to  the  east  is  the  Diva  Tem- 
ple, the  Brahma  Temple,  the  Temple  of  Zoroaster, 
and  the  Tomb  of  Odin.  Indeed,  everywhere  are 
there  suggestions  of  temples  and  tombs,  pagodas  and 
pyramids,  on  a  scale  that  no  work  of  human  hands 
can  rival.  "The  grandest  objects,"  says  Major  Dut- 
ton,*'  are  merged  in  a  congregation  of  others  equally 
grand."  With  the  wealth  of  form  goes  a  wealth  of 
color.  Never,  I  venture  to  say,  were  reds  and  browns 
and  grays  and  vermilions  more  appealing  to  the  eye 
than  they  are  as  they  softly  glow  in  this  great  canon. 
The  color-scheme  runs  from  the  dark,  sombre  hue 
of  the  gneiss  at  the  bottom,  up  through  the  yellow- 
ish brown  of  the  Cambrian  layers,  and  on  up  through 
seven  or  eight  broad  bands  of  varying  tints  of  red 
and  vermilion,  to  the  broad  yellowish-gray  at  the 
top. 

Ill 

The  north  side  of  the  canon  has  been  much  more 
deeply  and  elaborately  carved  than  the  south  side; 
most  of  the  great  architectural  features  are  on  the 
north  side  —  the  huge  temples  and  fortresses   and 

51 


TIME  AND   CHANGE 

amphitheatres.  The  strata  dip  very  gently  to  the 
north  and  northeast,  while  the  slope  of  the  surface 
is  to  the  south  and  southeast.  This  has  caused  the 
drainage  from  the  great  northern  plateaus  to  flow 
into  the  canon  and  thus  cut  and  carve  the  north 
side  as  we  behold  it. 

The  visitor  standing  upon  the  south  side  looks 
across  the  great  chasm  upon  the  bewildering  maze 
of  monumental  forms,  some  of  them  as  suggestive 
of  human  workmanship  as  anything  in  nature  well 
can  be,  —  crumbling  turrets  and  foundations,  forms 
as  distinctly  square  as  any  work  of  man's  hands,  vast 
fortress-like  structures  with  salients  and  entering 
angles  and  wing  walls  resisting  the  siege  of  time, 
huge  pyramidal  piles  rising  story  on  story,  three 
thousand  feet  or  more  above  their  foundations,  each 
successive  story  or  superstructure  faced  by  a  huge 
vertical  wall  which  rises  from  a  sloping  talus  that 
connects  it  with  the  story  next  below.  The  slopes 
or  taluses  represent  the  softer  rock,  the  vertical 
walls  the  harder  layers.  Usually  four  or  five  of  these 
receding  stories  make  up  each  temple  or  pyramid. 
Some  of  the  larger  structures  show  all  the  strata 
from  the  cap  of  light  Carboniferous  limestone  at  the 
top  to  the  gray  Cambrian  sandstone  at  the  bottom. 
From  others,  such  as  the  Temple  of  Isis,  all  the 
upper  formations  are  gone  with  a  pile  of  disinte- 
grated red  sandstone,  like  a  mass  of  brick  dust  on 
the  top  where  the  fragment  of  the  old  red  wall  made 

52 


THE  DIVINE  ABYSS 

its  last  stand.  In  those  masses,  which  are  still 
crowned  with  the  light  gray  limestone,  one  sees  how 
surely  the  process  of  disintegration  is  going  on  by 
the  fragments  and  debris  of  light  gray  rock,  like  the 
chips  of  giant  workmen,  that  strew  the  deeper- 
colored  slopes  below  them.  These  fragments  fade 
out  as  the  eye  drops  down  the  slopes,  as  if  they  had 
melted  like  bits  of  ice.  Indeed,  the  melting  of  ice 
and  the  dissolution  of  a  rock  do  not  differ  much  ex- 
cept that  one  is  very  rapid  and  the  other  infinitely 
slow.  In  time  (not  man's  time,  but  the  Lord's 
time),  all  these  light  masses  that  cap  the  huge  tem- 
ples will  be  weathered  away,  yea,  and  all  the  vast 
red  layers  beneath  them,  and  the  huge  structures 
will  be  slowly  consumed  by  time.  The  Colorado 
River  will  carry  their  ashes  to  the  sea,  and  where 
they  once  stood  will  be  seen  gray,  desert-like  pla- 
teaus. Their  outlines  now  stand  out  like  skeletons 
from  which  the  flesh  has  been  removed  —  sharp, 
angular,  obtrusive,  but  bound  together  as  by  liga- 
ments of  granite.  The  tooth  of  time  gnaws  at  them 
day  and  night  and  has  been  gnawing  for  thousands 
of  centuries,  so  that  in  some  cases  only  their  stumps 
remain.  From  the  Temple  of  Isis  and  the  Tomb  of 
Odin  the  two  or  three  upper  stories  are  gone. 

On  the  next  page  is  the  ground  plan  of  the  Temple 
of  Isis,  about  twenty-five  hundred  feet  high.  The 
first  story  is  about  a  thousand  feet;  the  second,  three 
hundred  and  fifty  feet;  the  third,  one  hundred  and 

53 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

fifty  feet;  the  fourth,  five  hundred  feet;  and  the 
fifth,  five  hundred  feet.   The  finish  at  the  top  shows 

as  a  heavy  crumbUng  wall, 
probably  one  hundred  feet 
or  more  high.  How  the  mass 
seems  to  be  resisting  the 
siege  of  time,  throwing  out 
its  salients  here  and  there, 
and  meeting  the  onset  of  the  foes  like  a  military 
engineer. 

The  pyramidal  form  of  these  rock-masses  is  ac- 
counted for  by  the  fact  that  they  were  carved  out 
from  the  top  downward,  and  that  each  successive 
story  is  vastly  older  than  the  one  immediately  be- 
neath it.  The  erosive  forces  have  been  working 
whole  geologic  ages  longer  on  the  top  layer  of  rock 
than  on  the  bottom  layer;  hence  the  topmost  ones 
are  entirely  gone  or  else  reduced  to  small  dimensions. 
But  what  feature  or  quality  of  the  rock  it  is  that 
lends  itself  so  readily  or  so  inevitably  to  these  archi- 
tectural forms  —  the  four  square  foundations,  the 
end  pilasters  and  balustrades,  and  so  on  —  is  to 
me  not  so  clear.  The  peculiar  rectangular  jointings, 
the  alternation  of  soft  and  hard  layers,  the  nearly 
horizontal  strata,  and  other  things,  no  doubt,  enter 
into  the  problem.  Many  of  these  features  are  found 
in  our  older  geology  of  the  East,  as  in  the  Catskills 
—  horizontal  strata,  hard  and  soft  layers  alternat- 
ing, but  with  the  vertical  jointing  less  pronounced; 

54 


THE  DIVINE  ABYSS 

hence  the  Cat  skills  have  few  canon-like  vallej^s, 
though  there  are  here  and  there  huge  gashes  through 
the  mountains  that  give  a  canon  effect,  and  there 
are  gigantic  walls  high  up  on  the  face  of  some  of  the 
mountains  that  suggest  one  side  of  a  mighty  canon. 
In  the  climate  of  the  Catskills  the  rock-masses  of 
the  Colorado  would  crumble  m.uch  more  rapidly 
than  they  do  here.  The  lines  of  many  of  these  nat- 
ural temples  or  fortresses  are  still  more  lengthened 
and  attenuated  than  those  of  the  Temple  of  Isis, 
appearing  like  mere  skeletons  of  their  former  selves. 
The  forms  that  weather  out  the  formation  above 
this,  the  Permian,  appear  to  be  more  rotund,  and 
tend  more  to  domes  and  rounded  hills. 

One  of  the  most  surprising  features  of  the  Grand 
Canon  is  its  cleanness  —  its  freedom  from  debris. 
It  is  a  home  of  the  gods,  swept  and  garnished;  no 
litter  or  confusion  or  fragments  of  fallen  and  broken 
rocky  walls  anywhere.  Those  vast  sloping  taluses 
are  as  clean  as  a  meadow;  rarely  at  the  foot  of  the 
huge  vertical  walls  do  you  see  a  fragment  of  fallen 
rock.  It  is  as  if  the  processes  of  erosion  and  de- 
gradation were  as  gentle  as  the  dews  and  the  snows, 
and  carved  out  this  mighty  abyss  grain  by  grain, 
which  has  probably  been  the  case.  That  much  of 
this  red  sandstone,  from  the  amount  of  iron  it  con- 
tains, or  from  some  other  cause,  disintegrates  easily 
and  rapidly,  is  very  obvious.  Looking  down  ^rom 
Hopi  Point  upon  a  vast  ridge  called  the  "  Man-of- 

55 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

War,"  one  sees  on  the  top,  where  once  there  must 
have  been  a  huge  wall  of  rock,  a  long  level  area  of 
red  soil  that  suggests  a  garden,  the  more  so  because 
it  is  regularly  divided  up  into  sections  by  straight 
lines  of  huge  stone  placed  as  if  by  the  hands  of 

man. 

One's  sense  of  the  depths  of  the  canon  is  so  great 
that  it  almost  makes  one  dizzy  to  see  the  little  birds 
fly  out  over  it,  or  plunge  down  into  it.  One  seems 
to  fear  that  they  too  will  get  dizzy  and  fall  to  the 
bottom.  We  watched  a  line  of  tourists  on  mules 
creeping  along  the  trail  across  the  inner  plateau, 
and  the  unaided  eye  had  trouble  to  hold  them;  they 
looked  like  little  red  ants.  The  eye  has  more  dif- 
jSculty  in  estimating  sizes  and  distances  beneath 
it  than  when  they  are  above  or  on  a  level  with  it, 
because  it  is  so  much  less  familiar  with  depth  than 
with  height  or  lateral  dimensions. 

Another  remarkable  and  unexpected  feature  of 
the  canon  is  its  look  of  ordered  strength.    Nearly 
all  the  lines  are  lines  of  greatest  strength. 
The  prevailing  profile  line  everywhere 
is  that  shown  herewith.    The  upright 
lines  represent  lines  of  cyclopean  ma- 
sonry, and  the  slant  is  the  talus  that 
connects  them,  covered  with  a  short, 
sage-colored  growth  of  some  kind,  and  as  soft  to 
the  eye  as  the  turf  of  our  fields. 
The  simple,  strong  structural  lines  assert  them- 

56 


THE  DIVINE  ABYSS 

selves  everywhere,  and  give  that  look  of  repose 
and  security  characteristic  of  the  scene.  The  rocky 
forces  always  seem  to  retreat  in  good  order  be- 
fore the  onslaught  of  time;  there  is  neither  rout 
nor  confusion;  everywhere  they  present  a  calm  up- 
right front  to  the  foe.  And  the  fallen  from  their 
ranks,  where  are  they?  A  cleaner  battlefield  between 
the  forces  of  nature  one  rarely  sees. 

The  weaker  portions  are,  of  course,  constantly 
giving  way.  The  elements  incessantly  lay  siege  to 
these  fortresses  and  take  advantage  of  every  flaw 
or  unguarded  point,  so  that  what  stands  has  been 
seven  times,  yea,  seventy  times  seven  times  tested, 
and  hence  gives  the  impression  of  impregnable 
strength.  The  angles  and  curves,  the  terraces  and 
foundations,  seem  to  be  the  work  of  some  master 
engineer,  with  only  here  and  there  a  toppling  rock. 

I  was  puzzled  to  explain  to  myself  the  reason  of  a 
certain  friendly  and  familiar  look  which  the  great 
abyss  had  for  me.  One  sees  or  feels  at  a  glance  that 
it  was  not  born  of  the  throes  and  convulsions  of  na- 
ture —  of  earthquake  shock  or  volcanic  explosion. 
It  does  not  suggest  the  crush  of  matter  and  the  wreck 
of  worlds.  Clearly  it  is  the  work  of  the  more  gentle 
and  beneficent  forces.  This  probably  accounts  for 
the  friendly  look.  Some  of  the  inner  slopes  and 
plateaus  seemed  like  familiar  ground  to  me:  I  must 
have  played  upon  them  when  a  school-boy.  Bright 
Angel  Creek,  for  some  inexplicable  reason,  recalled 

57 


TIME  AND   CHANGE 

a  favorite  trout-stream  of  my  native  hills,  and  the 
old  Cambrian  plateau  that  edges  the  inner  chasm, 
as  we  looked  down  upon  it  from  nearly  four  thou- 
sand feet  above,  looked  like  the  brown  meadow 
where  we  played  ball  in  the  old  school-days,  friendly, 
tender,  familiar,  in  its  slopes  and  terraces,  in  its  tints 
and  basking  sunshine,  but  grand  and  awe-inspiring 
in  its  depths,  its  huge  walls,  and  its  terrific  precipices. 

The  geologists  are  agreed  that  the  canon  is  only 
of  yesterday  in  geologic  time,  —  the  Middle  Ter- 
tiary, —  and  yet  behold  the  duration  of  that  yes- 
terday as  here  revealed,  probably  a  million  years  or 
more !  We  can  no  more  form  any  conception  of  such 
time  than  we  can  of  the  size  of  the  sun  or  of  the 
distance  of  the  fixed  stars. 

The  forces  that  did  all  this  vast  delving  and  sculp- 
turing — the  air,  the  rains,  the  frost,  the  sunshine  — 
are  as  active  now  as  they  ever  were ;  but  their  activ- 
ity is  a  kind  of  slumbering  that  rarely  makes  a  sign. 
Only  at  long  intervals  is  the  silence  of  any  part  of 
the  profound  abyss  broken  by  the  fall  of  loosened 
rocks  or  sliding  talus.  We  ourselves  saw  where  a 
huge  splinter  of  rock  had  recently  dropped  from  the 
face  of  the  cliff.  In  time  these  loosened  masses  dis- 
appear, as  if  they  melted  like  ice.  A  city  not  made 
with  hands,  but  as  surely  not  eternal  in  the  earth ! 
In  our  humid  and  severe  Eastern  climate,  frost  and 
ice  and  heavy  rains  working  together,  all  these  arch- 
itectural forms  would  have  crumbled  long  ago,  and 

58 


THE  DIVINE  ABYSS 

fertile  fields  or  hill-slopes  would  have  taken  their 
place.  In  the  older  Hawaiian  Islands,  which  prob- 
ably also  date  from  Tertiary  times,  the  rains  have 
carved  enormous  canons  and  amphitheatres  out  of 
the  hard  volcanic  rock,  in  some  places  grinding  the 
mountains  to  such  a  thin  edge  that  a  man  may  liter- 
ally sit  astride  them,  each  leg  pointing  into  opposite 
valleys.  In  the  next  geologic  age,  the  temples  and 
monuments  of  the  Grand  Canon  will  have  largely 
disappeared,  and  the  stupendous  spectacle  will  be 
mainly  a  thing  of  the  past. 

It  seems  to  take  millions  of  years  to  tame  a  moun- 
tain, to  curb  its  rude,  savage  power,  to  soften  its 
outlines,  and  bring  fertility  out  of  the  elemental 
crudeness  and  barrenness.  But  time  and  the  gentle 
rains  of  heaven  will  do  it,  as  they  have  done  it  in  the 
East,  and  as  they  are  fast  doing  it  in  the  West. 

An  old  guide  with  whom  I  talked,  who  had  lived 
in  and  about  the  canon  for  twenty-six  years,  said, 
"While  we  have  been  sitting  here,  the  canon  has 
widened  and  deepened";  which  was,  of  course, 
the  literal  truth,  the  mathematical  truth,  but  the 
widening  and  deepening  could  not  have  been  appre- 
hended by  human  sense. 

Our  little  span  of  human  life  is  far  too  narrow  for 
us  to  be  a  witness  of  any  of  the  great  earth  changes. 
These  changes  are  so  slow,  —  oh,  so  slow,  —  and  hu- 
man history  is  so  brief.  So  far  as  we  are  concerned, 
the  gods  of  the  earth  sit  in  council  behind  closed 

59 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

doors.  All  the  profound,  formative,  world-shaping 
forces  of  nature  go  on  in  a  realm  that  we  can  reach 
only  through  our  imaginations.  They  so  far  tran- 
scend our  human  experiences  that  it  requires  an  act 
of  faith  to  apprehend  them.  The  repose  of  the  hills 
and  the  mountains,  how  profound!  yet  they  may  be 
rising  or  sinking  before  our  very  eyes,  and  we  detect 
no  sign.  Only  on  exceptional  occasions,  during  earth- 
quakes or  volcanic  eruptions,  is  their  dreamless 
slumber  rudely  disturbed. 

Geologists  tell  us  that  from  the  great  plateau  in 
which  the  Grand  Canon  is  cut,  layers  of  rock  many 
thousands  of  feet  thick  were  cut  away  before  the 
canon  was  begun. 

Starting  from  the  high  plateau  of  Utah,  and  going 
south  toward  the  canon,  we  descend  a  grand  geo- 
logic stairway,  every  shelf  or  tread  of  which  consists 
of  different  formations  fifty  or  more  miles  broad, 
from  the  Eocene,  at  an  altitude  of  over  ten  thousand 
feet  at  the  start,  across  the  Cretaceous,  the  Juras- 
sic, the  Triassic,  the  Permian,  to  the  Carboniferous, 
which  is  the  bottom  or  landing  of  the  Grand  Canon 
plateau  at  an  altitude  of  about  five  thousand  feet. 
Each  step  terminates  more  or  less  abruptly,  the  first 
by  a  drop  of  eight  hundred  feet,  ornamented  by 
rows  of  square  obelisks  and  pilasters  of  uniform  pat- 
tern and  dimension,  "giving  the  effect,"  says  Major 
Dutton,  "of  a  gigantic  colonnade  from  which  the 
entablature  has  been  removed  or  has  fallen  in  ruins." 

60 


THE  DIVINE  ABYSS 

The  next  step,  or  platform,  the  Cretaceous,  slopes 
down  gradually  or  dies  out  on  the  step  beneath  it;, 
then  comes  the  Jurassic,  which  ends  in  white  sand- 
stone cliffs  several  hundred  feet  high;  then  the 
Triassic,  which  ends  in  the  famous  vermilion  cliffs 
thousands  of  feet  high,  most  striking  in  color  and  in 
form;  then  the  Permian  tread,  which  also  ends 
in  striking  cliffs,  with  their  own  style  of  color  and 
architecture;  and,  lastly,  the  great  Carboniferous 
platform  in  which  the  canon  itself  is  carved.  Now, 
all  these  various  strata  above  the 'canon,  making 
at  one  time  a  thickness  of  over  a  mile,  were  worn 
away  in  Pliocene  times,  before  the  cutting  of  the 
Grand  Canon  began.  Had  they  remained,  and  been 
cut  through,  we  should  have  had  a  chasm  two  miles 
deep  instead  of  one  mile. 

The  cutting  power  of  a  large,  rapid  volume  of 
water,  like  the  Colorado,  charged  with  sand  and 
gravel,  is  very  great.  According  to  Major  Button, 
in  the  hydraulic  mines  of  California,  the  escaping 
water  has  been  known  to  cut  a  chasm  from  twelve 
to  twenty  feet  deep  in  hard  basaltic  rock,  in  a  single 
year.  This  is,  of  course,  exceptional,  but  there  have, 
no  doubt,  been  times  when  the  Colorado  cut  down- 
ward very  rapidly.  The  enormous  weathering  of  its 
side  walls  is  to  me  the  more  wonderful,  probably 
because  the  forces  that  have  achieved  this  task  are 
silent  and  invisible,  and,  so  far  as  our  experience 
goes,  so  infinitely  slow  in  their  action. 

61 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

The  river  is  a  tremendous  machine  for  grinding 
and  sawing  and  transporting,  but  the  rains  and  the 
frost  and  the  air  and  the  sunbeams  smite  the  rocks 
as  with  weapons  of  down,  and  one  is  naturally  in- 
credulous as  to  their  destructive  effects. 

Some  of  the  smaller  rivers  in  the  plateau  region 
flow  in  very  deep  but  very  narrow  canons.  The 
rocks  being  harder  and  more  homogeneous,  the 
weathering  has  been  slight.  The  meteoric  forces 
have  not  taken  a  hand  in  the  game.  Thus  the  Parun- 
uweap  Canon  is  only  twenty  to  thirty  feet  wide,  but 
from  six  hundred  to  fifteen  hundred  feet  deep. 

I  suppose  the  slow,  inappreciable  erosion  to  which 
the  old  guide  alluded  would  have  cut  the  canon  since 
Middle  Tertiary  times.  The  river,  eating  downward 
at  the  rate  of  one  sixteenth  of  an  inch  a  year,  would 
do  it  in  about  one  million  years.  At  half  that  rate  it 
would  do  it  in  double  that  time.  In  the  earlier  part 
of  its  history,  when  the  rainfall  was  doubtless 
greater,  and  the  river  fuller,  the  erosion  must  have 
been  much  more  rapid  than  it  is  at  present.  The 
widening  of  the  canon  was  doubtless  a  slower  process 
than  the  downward  cutting.  But,  as  I  have  said, 
the  downward  cutting  would  tend  to  check  itself 
from  age  to  age,  while  the  widening  process  would 
go  steadily  forward.  Hence,  when  we  look  into 
the  great  abyss,  we  have  only  to  remember  the 
enormous  length  of  time  that  the  aerial  and  sub- 
aerial  forces  have  been  at  work  to  account  for  it. 

62 


THE  DIVINE  ABYSS 

Two  forces,  or  kinds  of  forces,  have  worked  to- 
gether in  excavating  the  canon:  the  river,  which  is 
the  primary  factor,  and  the  meteoric  forces,  which 
may  be  called  the  secondary,  as  they  follow  in  the 
wake  of  the  former.  The  river  starts  the  gash  down- 
ward, then  the  aerial  forces  begin  to  eat  into  the 
sides.  Acting  alone,  the  river  would  cut  a  trench  its 
own  width,  and  were  the  rocks  through  which  it  saws 
one  homogeneous  mass,  or  of  uniform  texture  and 
hardness,  the  width  of  the  trench  would  probably 
have  been  very  uniform  and  much  less  than  it  is 
now.     The  condition  that  has  contributed  to  its 
great  width  is  the  heterogeneity  of  the  different 
formations  —  some  hard  and  some  soft.  The  softer 
bands,  of  course,  introduce  the  element  of  weakness. 
They  decay  and  crumble  the  more  rapidly,  and  thus 
undermine  the  harder  bands  overlying  them,  which, 
by  reason  of  their  vertical  fractures,  break  off  and 
fall  to  the  bottom,  where  they  are  exposed  to  the 
action  of  floods  and  are  sooner  or  later  ground  up 
in  the  river's  powerful  maw.  Hence  the  recession  of 
the  banks  of  the  canon  has  gone  steadily  on  with  the 
downward  cutting  of  the  river.    Where  the  rock  is 
homogeneous,  as  it  is  in  the  inner  chasm  of  the  dark 
gneiss,  the  widening  process  seems  to  have  gone  on 
much  more  slowly.  Geologists  account  for  the  great 
width  of  the  main  chasm  when  compared  with  the 
depth,  on  the  theory  that  the  forces  that  work  later- 
ally have  been  more  continuously  active  than  has 

C3 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

the  force  that  cuts  downward.  There  is  convincing 
evidence  that  the  whole  region  has  been  many  times 
Hfted  up  since  the  cutting  began,  so  that  the  river 
has  had  its  active  and  passive  stages.  As  its  channel 
approached  the  sea  level,  its  current  would  be  much 
less  rapid,  and  the  downward  cutting  would  prac- 
tically cease,  till  the  section  was  elevated  again.  But 
all  the  time  the  forces  working  laterally  would  be  at 
work  without  interruption,  and  would  thus  gain  on 
their  checked  brethren  of  the  river  bottom. 

There  is  probably  another  explanation  of  what  we 
see  here.  Apart  from  the  mechanical  weathering  of 
the  rocks  as  a  result  of  the  arid  climate,  wherein 
rapid  and  often  extreme  changes  of  temperature 
take  place,  causing  the  surface  of  the  rocks  to  flake 
or  scale  off,  there  has  doubtless  been  unusual  chem- 
ical weathering,  and  this  has  been  largely  brought 
about  by  the  element  of  iron  that  all  these  rocks 
possess.  Their  many  brilliant  colors  are  imparted 
to  them  by  the  various  compounds  of  iron  which 
enter  into  their  composition.  And  iron,  though  the 
symbol  of  hardness  and  strength,  is  an  element  of 
weakness  in  rocks,  as  it  causes  them  to  oxidize  or 
disintegrate  more  rapidly.  In  the  marble  canon, 
where  apparently  the  rock  contains  no  iron,  the 
lateral  erosion  has  been  very  little,  though  the  river 
has  cut  a  trench  as  deep  as  it  has  in  other  parts  of  its 
course. 

How  often  I  thought  during  those  days  at  the 

64 


THE  DIVINE  ABYSS 

canon  of  the  geology  of  my  native  hills  amid  the 
Catskills,  which  show  the  effects  of  denudation  as 
much  older  than  that  shown  here  as  this  is  older  than 
the  washout  in  the  road  by  this  morning's  shower ! 
The  old  red  sandstone  in  which  I  hoed  corn  as  a 
farm-boy  dates  back  to  Middle  Palaeozoic  time,  or  to 
the  spring  of  the  great  geologic  year,  while  the  canon 
is  of  the  late  autumn.  Could  my  native  hills  have 
replied  to  my  mute  questionings,  they  would  have 
said :  "We  were  old,  old,  and  had  passed  through  the 
canon  stage  long  before  the  Grand  Canon  was  bom. 
We  have  had  all  that  experience,  and  have  forgot- 
ten  it  ages  ago.  No  vestiges  of  our  canons  remain. 
They  have  all  been  worn  down  and  obliterated  by 
the  strokes  of  a  hand  as  gentle  as  that  of  a  passing 
cloud.  Where  they  were,  are  now  broad,  fertile 
valleys,  with  rounded  knolls  and  gentle  slopes,  and 
the  sound  of  peaceful  husbandry.  The  great  ice 
sheet  rubbed  us  and  ploughed  us,  but  our  contours 
were  gentle  and  rounded  seons  before  that  event. 
When  the  Grand  Canon  is  as  old  as  we  are,  all  its 
superb  architectural  features  will  have  long  since 
disappeared,  its  gigantic  walls  will  have  crumbled, 
and  rolling  plains  and  gentle  valleys  will  have  taken 
its  place."  All  of  which  seems  quite  probable.  With 
time  enough,  the  gentle  forces  of  air  and  water  will 
surely  change  the  whole  aspect  of  this  tremendous 
chasm. 
On  the  second  day  we  made  the  descent  into  the 

65 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

canon  on  mule-back.  There  is  always  satisfaction 
in  going  to  the  bottom  of  things.  Then  we  wanted 
to  get  on  more  intimate  terms  with  the  great 
abyss,  to  wrestle  with  it,  if  need  be,  and  to  feel  its 
power,  as  well  as  to  behold  it.  It  is  not  best  always 
to  dwell  upon  the  rim  of  things  or  to  look  down  upon 
them  from  afar.  The  summits  are  good,  but  the 
valleys  have  their  charm,  also;  even  the  valley  of 
humiliation  has  its  lessons.  At  any  rate,  four  of  us 
were  unanimous  in  our  desire  to  sound  that  vast 
profound  on  mule-back,  trusting  that  the  return 
trip  would  satisfy  our  "climbing"  aspirations,  as 
it  did. 

It  is  quite  worth  while  to  go  down  into  the  canon 
on  mule-back,  if  only  to  fall  in  love  with  a  mule,  and 
to  learn  what  a  sure-footed,  careful,  and  docile 
creature,  when  he  is  on  his  good  behavior,  a  mule 
can  be.  My  mule  was  named  "Johnny,"  and  there 
was  soon  a  good  understanding  between  us.  I 
quickly  learned  to  turn  the  whole  problem  of  that 
perilous  descent  over  to  him.  He  knew  how  to  take 
the  sharp  turns  and  narrow  shelves  of  that  steep 
zigzag  much  better  than  I  did.  I  do  not  fancy  that 
the  thought  of  my  safety  was  "Johnny's"  guiding 
star;  his  solicitude  struck  nearer  home  than  that. 
There  was  much  ice  and  snow  on  the  upper  part  of 
the  trail,  and  only  those  slender  little  legs  of  "John- 
ny's" stood  between  me  and  a  tumble  of  two  or 
three  thousand  feet.     How  cautiously  he  felt  his 

66 


THE  DIVINE  ABYSS 

way  with  his  round  Httle  feet,  as,  with  lowered 
head,  he  seemed  to  be  scanning  the  trail  critically ! 
Only  when  he  swung  around  the  sharp  elbows  of 
the  trail  did  his  forefeet  come  near  the  edge  of  the 
brink.  Only  once  or  twice  at  such  times,  as  we  hung 
for  a  breath  above  the  terrible  incline,  did  I  feel  a 
slight  shudder.  One  of  my  companions,  who  had 
never  before  been  upon  an  animal's  back,  so  fell  in 
love  with  her  "Sandy"  that  she  longed  for  a  trunk 
big  enough  in  which  to  take  him  home  with  her. 

It  was  more  than  worth  while  to  make  the  de- 
scent to  traverse  that  Cambrian  plateau,  which 
from  the  rim  is  seen  to  flow  out  from  the  base  of  the 
enormous  cliffs  to  the  brink  of  the  inner  chasm,  look- 
ing like  some  soft,  lavender-colored  carpet  or  rug. 
I  had  never  seen  the  Cambrian  rocks,  the  lowest  of 
the  stratified  formations,  nor  set  my  foot  upon  Cam- 
brian soil.  Hence  a  new  experience  was  promised 
me.  Rocky  layers  probably  two  or  three  miles  thick 
had  been  worn  away  from  the  old  Cambrian  foun- 
dations, and  when  I  looked  down  upon  that  gently 
undulating  plateau,  the  thought  of  the  eternity  of 
time  which  it  represented  tended  quite  as  much  to 
make  me  dizzy  as  did  the  drop  of  nearly  four  thou- 
sand feet.  We  found  it  gravelly  and  desert-like,  cov- 
ered with  cacti,  low  sagebrush,  and  other  growths. 
The  dim  trail  led  us  to  its  edge,  where  we  could  look 
down  into  the  twelve-hundred-foot  V-shaped  gash 
which  the  river  had  cut  into  the  dark,  crude-looking 

67 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

Archaean  rock.  How  distinctly  it  looked  like  a  new 
day  in  creation  where  the  horizontal,  yellowish-gray 
beds  of  the  Cambrian  w^ere  laid  down  upon  the  dark, 
amorphous,  and  twisted  older  granite!  How  care- 
fully the  level  strata  had  been  fitted  to  the  shapeless 
mass  beneath  it!  It  all  looked  like  the  work  of  a 
master  mason;  apparently  you  could  put  the  point 
of  your  knife  where  one  ended  and  the  other  began. 
The  older  rock  suggested  chaos  and  turmoil;  the 
other  suggested  order  and  plan,  as  if  the  builder  had 
said,  "Now  upon  this  foundation  we  will  build  our 
house."  It  is  an  interesting  fact,  the  full  geologic 
significance  of  which  I  suppose  I  do  not  appreciate, 
that  the  different  formations  are  usually  marked  off 
from  one  another  in  just  this  sharp  way,  as  if  each 
one  was,  indeed,  the  work  of  a  separate  day  of  crea- 
tion. Nature  appears  at  long  intervals  to  turn  over  a 
new  leaf  and  start  a  new  chapter  in  her  great  book. 
The  transition  from  one  geologic  age  to  another 
appears  to  be  abrupt:  new  colors,  new  constituents, 
new  qualities  appear  in  the  rocks  with  a  suddenness 
hard  to  reconcile  with  Ly ell's  doctrine  of  uniform- 
itarianism,  just  as  new  species  appear  in  the  life  of 
the  globe  with  an  abruptness  hard  to  reconcile  with 
Darwin's  slow  process  of  natural  selection.  Is  sudden 
mutation,  after  all-,  the  key  to  all  these  phenomena? 
We  ate  our  lunch  on  the  old  Cambrian  table, 
placed  there  for  us  so  long  ago,  and  gazed  down 
upon  the  turbulent  river  hiding  and  reappearing  in 

68 


THE  DIVINE  ABYSS 

its  labyrinthian  channel  so  far  below  us.  It  is  worth 
while  to  make  the  descent  in  order  to  look  upon  the 
river  which  has  been  the  chief  quarryman  in  ex- 
cavating the  canon,  and  to  find  how  inadequate  it 
looks  for  the  work  ascribed  to  it.  Viewed  from  where 
we  sat,  I  judged  it  to  be  forty  or  fifty  feet  broad,  but 
I  was  assured  that  it  was  between  two  and  three 
hundred  feet.  Water  and  sand  are  ever  symbols 
of  instability  and  inconstancy,  but  let  them  work 
together,  and  they  saw  through  mountains,  and 
undermine  the  foundations  of  the  hills. 

It  is  always  worth  while  to  sit  or  kneel  at  the  feet  ^ 
of  grandeur,  to  look  up  into  the  placid  faces  of  the 
earth  gods  and  feel  their  power,  and  the  tourist 
who  goes  down  into  the  canon  certainly  has  this 
privilege.  We  did  not  bring  back  in  our  hands,  or  in 
our  hats,  the  glory  that  had  lured  us  from  the  top, 
but  we  seemed  to  have  been  nearer  its  sources,  and 
to  have  brought  back  a  deepened  sense  of  the  mag- 
nitude of  the  forms,  and  of  the  depth  of  the  chasm 
which  we  had  heretofore  gazed  upon  from  a  distance. 
Also  we  had  plucked  the  flower  of  safety  from  the 
nettle  danger,  always  an  exhilarating  enterprise. 

In  climbing  back,  my  eye,  now  sharpened  by  my 
geologic  reading,  dwelt  frequently  and  long  upon 
the  horizon  where  that  cross-bedded  Carboniferous 
sandstone  joins  the  Carboniferous  limestone  above 
it.  How  much  older  the  sandstone  looked !  I  could 
not  avoid  the  impression  that  its  surface  must  have 

69 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

formed  a  plane  of  erosion  ages  and  ages  before  the 
limestone  had  been  laid  down  upon  it. 

We  had  left  plenty  of  ice  and  snow  at  the  top,  but 
in  the  bottom  we  found  the  early  spring  flowers 
blooming,  and  a  settler  at  what  is  called  the  In- 
dian Gardens  was  planting  his  garden.  Here  I  heard 
the  song  of  the  canon  wren,  a  new  and  very  pleasing 
bird-song  to  me.  I  think  our  dreams  were  somewhat 
disturbed  that  night  by  the  impressions  of  the  day, 
but  our  day-dreams  since  that  time  have  at  least 
been  sweeter  and  more  comforting,  and  I  am  sure 
•  that  the  remainder  of  our  lives  will  be  the  richer  for 
our  having  seen  the  Grand  Canon. 


Ill 

THE  SPELL  OF  THE  YOSEMITE 


YOSEMITE  won  my  heart  at  once,  as  it  seems 
to  win  the  hearts  of  all  who  visit  it.  In  my 
case  many  things  helped  to  do  it,  but  I  am  sure  a 
robin,  the  first  I  had  seen  since  leaving  home,  did 
his  part.  He  struck  the  right  note,  he  brought  the 
scene  home  to  me,  he  supplied  the  link  of  association. 
There  he  was,  running  over  the  grass  or  perching 
on  the  fence,  or  singing  from  a  tree-top  in  the  old 
familiar  way.  Where  the  robin  is  at  home,  there  at 
home  am  I.  But  many  other  things  helped  to  win 
my  heart  to  the  Yosemite  —  the  whole  character  of 
the  scene,  not  only  its  beauty  and  sublimity,  but  the 
air  of  peace  and  protection,  and  of  homelike  seclu- 
sion that  pervades  it;  the  charm  of  a  nook,  a  retreat, 
combined  with  the  power  and  grandeur  of  nature 
in  her  sternest  moods. 

After  passing  from  the  hotel  at  El  Portal  along 
the  foaming  and  roaring  Merced  River,  and  amid 
the  tumbled  confusion  of  enormous  granite  bould- 
ers shaken  down  from  the  cliffs  above,  you  cross  the 
threshold  of  the  great  valley  as  into  some  vast  house 
or  hall  carved  out  of  the  mountains,  and  at  once  feel 

71 


II 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

the  spell  of  the  brooding  calm  and  sheltered  seclu- 
sion that  pervades  it.  You  pass  suddenly  from  the 
tumultuous,  the  chaotic,  into  the  ordered,  the  tran- 
quil, the  restful,  which  seems  enhanced  by  the  power 
and  grandeur  that  encompass  them  about.  You 
can  hardly  be  prepared  for  the  hush  that  suddenly 
falls  upon  the  river  and  for  the  gentle  rural  and 
sylvan  character  of  much  that  surrounds  you;  the 
peace  of  the  fields,  the  seclusion  of  the  woods,  the 
privacy  of  sunny  glades,  the  enchantment  of  falls 
and  lucid  waters,  with  a  touch  of  human  occupancy 
here  and  there  —  all  this,  set  in  that  enormous 
granite  frame,  three  or  four  thousand  feet  high, 
ornamented  with  domes  and  spires  and  peaks  still 
higher, —  it  is  all  this  that  wins  your  heart  and  fills 
your  imagination  in  the  Yosemite. 

As  you  ride  or  walk  along  the  winding  road  up  the 
level  valley  amid  the  noble  pines  and  spruces  and 
oaks,  and  past  the  groves  and  bits  of  meadow  and 
the  camps  of  many  tents,  and  the  huge  mossy  gran- 
ite boulders  here  and  there  reposing  in  the  shade  of 
the  trees,  with  the  full,  clear,  silent  river  winding 
through  the  plain  near  you,  you  are  all  the  time 
aware  of  those  huge  vertical  walls,  their  faces  scarred 
and  niched,  streaked  with  color,  or  glistening  with 
moisture,  and  animated  with  waterfalls,  rising  up 
on  either  hand,  thousands  of  feet  high,  not  archi- 
tectural, or  like  something  builded,  but  like  the  sides 
and  the  four  corners  of  the  globe  itself.   What  an 

72 


THE  SPELL  OF  THE  YOSEMITE 

impression  of  mass  and  of  power  and  of  grandeur  in 
repose  filters  into  you  as  you  walk  along!  El  Capi- 
tan  stands  there  showing  its  simple  sweeping  lines 
through  the  trees  as  you  approach,  like  one  of  the 
veritable  pillars  of  the  firmament.  How  long  we  are 
nearing  it  and  passing  it!  It  is  so  colossal  that  it 
seems  near  while  it  is  yet  far  off.  It  is  so  simple  that 
the  eye  takes  in  its  naked  grandeur  at  a  glance.  It 
demands  of  you  a  new  standard  of  size  which  you 
cannot  at  once  produce.  It  is  as  clean  and  smooth 
as  the  flank  of  a  horse,  and  as  poised  and  calm  as 
a  Greek  statue.  It  curves  out  toward  the  base  as  if 
planted  there  to  resist  the  pressure  of  worlds  — 
probably  the  most  majestic  single  granite  column 
or  mountain  buttress  on  the  earth.  Its  summit  is 
over  three  thousand  feet  above  you.  Across  the  val- 
ley, nearly  opposite,  rise  the  Cathedral  Rocks  to 
nearly  the  same  height,  while  farther  along,  beyond 
El  Capitan,  the  Three  Brothers  shoulder  the  sky  at 
about  the  same  dizzy  height.  Near  the  head  of  the 
great  valley,  North  Dome,  perfect  in  outline  as  if 
turned  in  a  lathe,  and  its  brother,  the  Half  Dome 
(or  shall  we  say  half-brother?)  across  the  valley, 
look  down  upon  Mirror  Lake  from  an  altitude  of 
over  four  thousand  feet.  These  domes  suggest  enor- 
mous granite  bubbles  if  such  were  possible  pushed 
up  from  below  and  retaining  their  forms  through 
the  vast  geologic  ages.  Of  course  they  must  have 
weathered  enormously,  but  as  the  rock  seems  to 

73 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

peel  off  in  concentric  sheets,  their  forms  are  pre- 
served. 

II 

One  warm,  bright  Sunday  near  the  end  of  April, 
six  of  us  walked  up  from  the  hotel  to  Vernal  and 
Nevada  Falls,  or  as  near  to  them  as  we  could  get,  and 
took  our  fill  of  the  tumult  of  foaming  waters  strug- 
gling with  the  wreck  of  huge  granite  cliffs:  so  impasr 
sive  and  immobile  the  rocks,  so  impetuous  and  reck- 
less and  determined  the  onset  of  the  waters,  till  the 
falls  are  reached,  when  the  obstructed  river  seems 
to  find  the  escape  and  the  freedom  it  was  so  eagerly 
seeking.  Better  to  be  completely  changed  into  foam 
and  spray  by  one  single  leap  of  six  hundred  feet  into 
empty  space,  the  river  seems  to  say,  than  be  forever 
baflSed  and  tortured  and  torn  on  this  rack  of  merci- 
less boulders. 

We  followed  the  zigzagging  trail  up  the  steep  side 
of  the  valley,  touching  melting  snow-banks  in  its 
upper  courses,  passing  huge  granite  rocks  also  melt- 
ing in  the  slow  heat  of  the  geologic  ages,  pausing  to 
take  in  the  rugged,  shaggy  spruces  and  pines  that 
sentineled  the  mountain-sides  here  and  there,  or 
resting  our  eyes  upon  Liberty  Cap,  which  carries 
its  suggestive  form  a  thousand  feet  or  more  above 
the  Nevada  Fall.  What  beauty,  what  grandeur 
attended  us  that  day!  the  wild  tumult  of  waters, 
the  snow-white  falls,  the  motionless  avalanches  of 

74 


THE   SPELL  OF  THE  YOSEMITE 

granite  rocks,  and  the  naked  granite  shaft.  Liberty 
Cap,  dominating  all! 

And  that  night,  too,  when  we  sat  around  a  big 
camp-fire  near  our  tents  in  the  valley,  and  saw  the 
full  moon  come  up  and  look  down  upon  us  from 
behind  Sentinel  Rock,  and  heard  the  intermittent 
booming  of  Yosemite  Falls  sifting  through  the 
spruce  trees  that  towered  around  us,  and  felt  the 
tender,  brooding  spirit  of  the  great  valley,  itself 
touched  to  lyric  intensity  by  the  grandeurs  on  every 
hand,  steal  in  upon  us,  and  possess  our  souls — surely 
that  was  a  night  none  of  us  can  ever  forget.  As  Yo- 
semite can  stand  the  broad,  searching  light  of  mid- 
day and  not  be  cheapened,  so  its  enchantments  can 
stand  the  light  of  the  moon  and  the  stars  and  not 
be  rendered  too  vague  and  impalpable. 

Ill 

Going  from  the  Grand  Canon  to  Yosemite  is 
going  from  one  sublimity  to  another  of  a  different 
order.  The  canon  is  the  more  strange,  unearthly, 
apocryphal,  appeals  more  to  the  imagination,  and 
is  the  more  overwhelming  in  its  size,  its  wealth  of 
color,  and  its  multitude  of  suggestive  forms.  But  for 
quiet  majesty  and  beauty,  with  a  touch  of  the  sylvan 
and  pastoral,  too,  Yosemite  stands  alone.  One  could 
live  with  Yosemite,  camp  in  it,  tramp  in  it,  winter 
and  summer  in  it,  and  find  nature  in  her  tender  and 
human,  almost  domestic  moods,  as  well  as  in  her 

75 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

grand  and  austere.  But  I  do  not  think  one  could 
ever  feel  at  home  in  or  near  the  Grand  Canon;  it  is 
too  unlike  anything  we  have  ever  known  upon  the 
earth;  it  is  like  a  vision  of  some  strange  colossal 
city  uncovered  from  the  depth  of  geologic  time.  You 
may  have  come  to  it,  as  we  did,  from  the  Petrified 
Forests,  where  you  saw  the  silicified  trunks  of  thou- 
sands of  gigantic  trees  or  tree  ferns,  that  grew  mil- 
lions of  years  ago,  most  of  them  uncovered,  but 
many  of  them  protruding  from  banks  of  clay  and 
gravel,  and  in  their  interiors  rich  in  all  the  colors  of 
the  rainbow,  and  you  wonder  if  you  may  not  now 
be  gazing  upon  some  petrified  antediluvian  city  of 
temples  and  holy  places  exhumed  by  mysterious 
hands  and  opened  up  to  the  vulgar  gaze  of  to-day. 
You  look  into  it  from  above  and  from  another  world 
and  you  descend  into  it  at  your  peril.  Yosemite  you 
enter  as  into  a  gigantic  hall  and  make  your  own;  the 
canon  you  gaze  down  upon,  and  are  an  alien,  whether 
you  enter  it  or  not.  Yosemite  is  carved  out  of  the 
most  majestic  and  enduring  of  all  rocks,  granite;  the 
Grand  Canon  is  carved  out  of  one  of  the  most  beau- 
tiful, but  perishable,  red  Carboniferous  sandstone 
and  limestone.  There  is  a  maze  of  beautiful  and  in- 
tricate lines  in  the  latter,  a  wilderness  of  temple-like 
forms  and  monumental  remains,  and  noble  archi- 
tectural profiles  that  delight  while  they  bewilder  the 
eye.  Yosemite  has  much  greater  simplicity,  and  is 
much  nearer  the  classic  standard  of  beauty.    Its 

76 


THE  SPELL  OF  THE  YOSEMITE 

grand  and  austere  features  predominate,  of  course, 
but  underneath  these  and  adorning  them  are  many 
touches  of  the  idyllic  and  the  picturesque.  Its  many 
waterfalls  fluttering  like  white  lace  against  its  verti- 
cal granite  walls,  its  smooth,  level  floor,  its  noble 
pines  and  oaks,  its  open  glades,  its  sheltering  groves, 
its  bright,  clear,  winding  river,  its  soft  voice  of  many 
waters,  its  flowers,  its  birds,  its  grass,  its  verdure, 
even  its  orchards  of  blooming  apple  trees,  all  in- 
closed in  this  tremendous  granite  frame — what  an 
unforgettable  picture  it  all  makes,  what  a  blending 
of  the  sublime  and  the  homelike  and  familiar  it  all 
is !  It  is  the  waterfalls  that  make  the  granite  alive, 
and  bursting  into  bloom  as  it  were.  What  a  touch 
they  give!  how  they  enliven  the  scene!  What  music 
they  evoke  from  these  harps  of  stone ! 

The  first  leap  of  Yosemite  Falls  is  sixteen  hun- 
dred feet  —  sixteen  hundred  feet  of  a  compact  mass 
of  snowy  rockets  shooting  downward  and  bursting 
into  spray  around  which  rainbows  flit  and  hover. 
The  next  leap  is  four  hundred  feet,  and  the  last 
six  hundred.  We  tried  to  get  near  the  foot  and  in- 
spect the  hidden  recess  in  which  this  airy  spirit 
again  took  on  a  more  tangible  form  of  still,  run- 
ning water,  but  the  spray  over  a  large  area  fell  like  a 
summer  shower,  drenching  the  trees  and  the  rocks, 
and  holding  the  inquisitive  tourist  off  at  a  safe 
distance.  We  had  to  beat  a  retreat  with  dripping 
garments  before  we  had  got  within  fifty  yards  of  the 

77 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

foot  of  the  fall.  At  first  I  was  surprised  at  the  vol- 
ume of  water  that  came  hurrying  out  of  the  hidden 
recess  of  dripping  rocks  and  trees  —  a  swiftly  flow- 
ing stream,  thirty  or  forty  feet  wide,  and  four  or 
five  feet  deep.  How  could  that  comparatively  nar- 
row curtain  of  white  spray  up  there  give  birth  to 
such  a  full  robust  stream?  But  I  saw  that  in  making 
the  tremendous  leap  from  the  top  of  the  precipice, 
the  stream  was  suddenly  drawn  out,  as  we  stretch 
a  rubber  band  in  our  hands,  and  that  the  solid  and 
massive  current  below  was  like  the  rubber  again  re- 
laxed. The  strain  was  over,  and  the  united  waters 
deepened  and  slowed  up  over  their  rocky  bed. 

Yosemite  for  a  home  or  a  camp,  the  Grand  Canon 
for  a  spectacle.  I  have  spoken  of  the  robin  I  saw 
in  Yosemite  Valley.  Think  how  forlorn  and  out  of 
place  a  robin  would  seem  in  the  Grand  Canon! 
What  would  he  do  there?  There  is  no  turf  for  him 
to  inspect,  and  there  are  no  trees  for  him  to  perch 
on.  I  should  as  soon  expect  to  find  him  amid  the 
pyramids  of  Egypt,  or  amid  the  ruins  of  Karnak. 
The  bluebird  was  in  the  Yosemite  also,  and  the 
water-ouzel  haunted  the  lucid  waters. 

I  noticed  a  peculiarity  of  the  oak  in  Yosemite  that 
I  never  saw  elsewhere^  —  a  fluid  or  outflowing  condi- 
tion of  the  growth  aboveground,  such  as  one  usually 
sees  in  the  roots  of  trees  —  so  that  it  tended  to  en- 

1  I  have  since  observed  the  same  trait  in  the  oaks  in  Georgia 
— probably  a  characteristic  of  this  tree  in  southern  latitudes. 

78 


THE  SPELL  OF  THE  YOSEMITE 

velop  and  swallow,  as  it  were,  any  solid  object  with 
which  it  came  in  contact.  If  its  trunk  touched  a 
point  of  rock,  it  would  put  out  great  oaken  lips 
several  inches  in  extent  as  if  to  draw  the  rock  into 
its  maw.  If  a  dry  limb  was  cut  or  broken  off,  a  foot 
from  the  trunk,  these  thin  oaken  lips  would  slowly 
creep  out  and  envelop  it  —  a  sort  of  Western  omni- 
vorous trait  appearing  in  the  trees. 

Whitman  refers  to  "the  slumbering  and  liquid 
trees."  These  Yosemite  oaks  recall  his  expression 
more  surely  than  any  of  our  Eastern  trees. 

The  reader  may  create  for  himself  a  good  image 
of  Yosemite  by  thinking  of  a  section  of  seven  or 
eight  miles  of  the  Hudson  River,  midway  of  its 
course,  as  emptied  of  its  water  and  deepened  three 
thousand  feet  or  more,  having  the  sides  nearly  ver- 
tical, with  snow-white  waterfalls  fluttering  against 
them  here  and  there,  the  famous  spires  and  domes 
planted  along  the  rim,  and  the  landscape  of  groves 
and  glades,  with  its  still,  clear  winding  river,  occupy- 
ing the  bottom. 

IV 

One  cannot  look  upon  Yosemite  or  walk  beneath 
its  towering  walls  without  the  question  arising  in 
his  mind.  How  did  all  this  happen?  What  were  the 
agents  that  brought  it  about?  There  has  been  a  great 
geologic  drama  enacted  here;  who  or  what  were  the 
star  actors?  There  are  two  other  valleys  in  this  part 
of  the  Sierra,  Hetch-Hetchy  and  King's  River,  that 

79 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

are  almost  identical  in  their  main  features,  though 
the  Merced  Yosemite  is  the  widest  of  the  three. 
Each  of  them  is  a  tremendous  chasm  in  the  granite 
rock,  with  nearly  vertical  walls,  domes,  El  Capitans, 
and  Sentinel  and  Cathedral  Rocks,  and  waterfalls 
—  all  modeled  on  the  same  general  plan.  I  believe 
there  is  nothing  just  like  this  trio  of  Yosemites  any- 
where else  on  the  globe. 

Guided  by  one's  ordinary  sense  or  judgment  alone, 
one's  judgment  as  developed  and  disciplined  by  the 
everyday  affairs  of  life  and  the  everyday  course 
of  nature,  one  would  say  on  beholding  Yosemite 
that  here  is  the  work  of  exceptional  and  extraor- 
dinary agents  or  world-building  forces.  It  is  as  sur- 
prising and  exceptional  as  would  be  a  cathedral  in 
a  village  street,  or  a  gigantic  sequoia  in  a  grove  of 
our  balsam  firs.  The  approach  to  it  up  the  Merced 
River  does  not  prepare  one  for  any  such  astonishing 
spectacle  as  awaits  one.  The  rushing,  foaming 
water  amid  the  tumbled  confusion  of  huge  granite 
rocks  and  the  open  V-shaped  valley,  are  nothing 
very  remarkable  or  unusual.  Then  suddenly  you  are 
on  the  threshold  of  this  hall  of  the  elder  gods.  De- 
mons and  furies  might  lurk  in  the  valley  below,  but 
here  is  the  abode  of  the  serene,  beneficent  Olympian 
deities.  All  is  so  calm,  so  hushed,  so  friendly,  yet  so 
towering,  so  stupendous,  so  unspeakably  beautiful. 
You  are  in  a  mansion  carved  out  of  the  granite 
foundations  of  the  earth,  with  walls  two  or  three 

80 


THE  SPELL  OF  THE  YOSEMITE 

thousand  feet  high,  hung  here  and  there  with  snow- 
white  waterfalls,  and  supporting  the  blue  sky  on 
domes  and  pinnacles  still  higher.  Oh,  the  calmness 
and  majesty  of  the  scene!  the  evidence  of  such  tre- 
mendous activity  of  some  force,  some  agent,  and 
now  so  tranquil,  so  sheltering,  so  beneficent! 

That  there  should  be  two  or  three  Yosemites  in 
the  Sierra  not  very  far  apart,  all  with  the  main  fea- 
tures singularly  alike,  is  very  significant  —  as  if  this 
kind  of  valley  was  latent  in  the  granite  of  that  region 
—  some  peculiarity  of  rock  structure  that  lends 
itself  readily  to  these  formations.  The  Sierra  lies 
beyond  the  southern  limit  of  the  great  continental 
ice-sheet  of  late  Tertiary  times,  but  it  nursed  and 
reared  many  local  glaciers,  and  to  the  eroding  power 
of  these  its  Yosemites  are  partly  due.  But  water  was 
at  work  here  long  before  the  ice  —  eating  down  into 
the  granite  and  laying  open  the  mountain  for  the 
ice  to  begin  its  work.  Ice  may  come,  and  ice  may 
go,  says  the  river,  but  I  go  on  forever.  Water  tends 
to  make  a  V-shaped  valley,  ice  a  U-shaped  one, 
though  in  the  Hawaiian  Islands,  where  water  erosion 
alone  has  taken  place,  the  prevailing  form  of  the 
valleys  is  that  of  the  U-shaped.  Yosemite  approxi- 
mates to  this  shape,  and  ice  has  certainly  played  a 
part  in  its  formation.  But  the  glacier  seems  to  have 
stopped  at  the  outlet  of  the  great  valley;  it  did  not 
travel  beyond  the  gigantic  hall  it  had  helped  to  ex- 
cavate.  The  valley  of  the  Merced  from  the  mouth 

81 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

of  Yosemite  downward  is  an  open  valley  strewn 
with  huge  angular  granite  rocks  and  shows  no  signs 
of  glaciation  whatever.  The  reason  of  this  abrupt- 
ness is  quite  beyond  my  ken.  It  is  to  me  a  plausible 
theory  that  when  the  granite  that  forms  the  Sierra 
was  lifted  or  squeezed  up  by  the  shrinking  of 
the  earth,  large  fissures  and  crevasses  may  have 
occurred,  and  that  Yosemite  and  kindred  valleys 
may  be  the  result  of  the  action  of  water  and  ice  in 
enlarging  these  original  chasms.  Little  wonder  that 
the  earlier  geologists,  such  as  Whitney,  were  led  to 
attribute  the  exceptional  character  of  these  valleys 
to  exceptional  and  extraordinary  agents  —  to  sudden 
faulting  or  dislocation  of  the  earth's  crust.  But 
geologists  are  becoming  more  and  more  loath  to  call 
in  the  cataclysmal  to  explain  any  feature  of  the  topo- 
graphy of  the  land.  Not  to  the  thunder  or  the  light- 
ning, to  earthquake  or  volcano,  to  the  forces  of 
upheaval  or  dislocation,  but  to  the  still,  small 
voice  of  the  rain  and  the  winds,  of  the  frost  and  the 
snow,  —  the  gentle  forces  now  and  here  active  all 
about  us,  carving  the  valleys  and  reducing  the 
mountains,  and  changing  the  courses  of  rivers,  — 
to  these,  as  Lyell  taught  us,  we  are  to  look  in  nine 
cases  out  of  ten,  yes,  in  ninety-nine  out  of  a  hun- 
dred, to  account  for  the  configuration  of  the  con- 
tinents. 

The  geologists  of  our  day,  while  not  agreeing  as 
to  the  amount  of  work  done  respectively  by  ice  and 

82 


THE  SPELL  OF  THE  YOSEMITE 

water,  yet  agree  that  to  the  latter  the  larger  propor- 
tion of  the  excavation  is  to  be  ascribed.  At  any  rate 
between  them  both  they  have  turned  out  one  of  the 
most  beautiful  and  stupendous  pieces  of  mountain 
carving  to  be  found  upon  the  earth. 


IV 

THROUGH  THE  EYES  OF  THE 
GEOLOGIST 


HOW  habitually  we  go  about  over  the  surface 
of  the  earth,  delving  it  or  cultivating  it  or 
leveling  it,  without  thinking  that  it  has  not  always 
been  as  we  now  find  it,  that  the  mountains  were  not 
always  mountains,  nor  the  valleys  always  valleys, 
nor  the  plains  always  plains,  nor  the  sand  always 
sand,  nor  the  clay  always  clay.  Our  experience  goes 
but  a  little  way  in  such  matters.  Such  a  thought 
takes  us  from  human  time  to  God's  time,  from  the 
horizon  of  place  and  years  to  the  horizon  of  geologic 
ages.  We  go  about  our  little  affairs  in  the  world, 
sowing  and  reaping  and  building  and  journeying, 
like  children  playing  through  the  halls  of  their  an- 
cestors, without  pausing  to  ask  how  these  things  all 
came  about.  We  do  not  reflect  upon  the  age  of  our 
fields  any  more  than  we  do  upon  the  size  of  the  globe 
under  our  feet:  when  we  become  curious  about  such 
matters  and  look  upon  the  mountains  as  either  old 
or  young,  or  as  the  subjects  of  birth,  growth,  and 
decay,  then  we  are  unconscious  geologists.  It  is  to 
our  interest  in  such  things  that  geology  appeals  and 
it  is  this  interest  that  it  stimulates  and  guides. 

85 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

What  an  astonishing  revelation,  for  instance,  that 
the  soil  was  born  of  the  rocks,  and  is  still  born  of  the 
rocks;  that  every  particle  of  it  was  once  locked  up 
in  the  primitive  granite  and  was  unlocked  by  the 
slow  action  of  the  rain  and  the  dews  and  the  snows; 
that  the  rocky  ribs  of  the  earth  were  clothed  with 
this  fertile  soil  out  of  which  we  came  and  to  which 
we  return  by  their  own  decay ;  that  the  pulling-down 
of  the  inorganic  meant  the  building-up  of  the  organic; 
that  the  death  of  the  crystal  meant  the  birth  of  the 
cell,  and  indirectly  of  you  and  me  and  of  all  that 
lives  upon  the  earth. 

Had  there  been  no  soil,  had  the  rocks  not  decayed, 
there  had  been  no  you  and  me.  Such  considerations 
have  long  made  me  feel  a  keen  interest  in  geology, 
and  especially  of  late  years  have  stimulated  my 
desire  to  try  to  see  the  earth  as  the  geologist  sees  it. 
I  have  always  had  a  good  opinion  of  the  ground 
underfoot,  out  of  which  we  all  come,  and  to  which 
we  all  return;  and  the  story  the  geologists  tell  us 
about  it  is  calculated  to  enhance  greatly  that  good 
opinion. 

I  think  that  if  I  could  be  persuaded,  as  my  fathers 
were,  that  the  world  was  made  in  six  days,  by  the 
fiat  of  a  supernatural  power,  I  should  soon  lose  my 
interest  in  it.  Such  an  account  of  it  takes  it  out  of 
the  realm  of  human  interest,  because  it  takes  it  out 
of  the  realm  of  natural  causation,  and  places  it  in  the 
realm  of  the  arbitrary,  and  non-natural.     But  to 

86 


THROUGH  THE  GEOLOGIST'S  EYES 

know  that  it  was  not  made  at  all,  in  the  mechanical 
sense,  but  that  it  grew  —  that  it  is  an  evolution 
as  much  as  the  life  upon  the  surface,  that  it  has 
an  almost  infinite  past,  that  it  has  been  developing 
and  ripening  for  millions  upon  millions  of  years,  a 
veritable  apple  upon  the  great  sidereal  tree,  amelio- 
rating from  cycle  to  cycle,  mellowing,  coloring, 
sweetening  —  why,  such  a  revelation  adds  im- 
mensely to  our  interest  in  it. 

As  with  nearly  everything  else,  the  wonder  of  the 
world  grows  the  more  we  grasp  its  history.  The 
wonder  of  life  grows  the  more  we  consider  the  chaos 
of  fire  and  death  out  of  which  it  came;  the  wonder  of 
man  grows  the  more  we  peer  into  the  abyss  of  geo- 
logic time  and  of  low  bestial  life  out  of  which  he 
came. 

Not  a  tree,  not  a  shrub,  not  a  flower,  not  a  green 
thing  growing,  not  an  insect  of  an  hour,  but  has  a 
background  of  a  vast  aeon  of  geologic  and  astro- 
nomic time,  out  of  which  the  forces  that  shaped  it 
have  emerged,  and  over  which  the  powers  of  chaos 
and  darkness  have  failed  to  prevail. 

The  modern  geologist  affords  us  one  of  the  best 
illustrations  of  the  uses  of  the  scientific  imagina- 
tion that  we  can  turn  to.  The  scientific  imagination  y 
seems  to  be  about  the  latest  phase  of  the  evolution 
of  the  human  mind.  This  power  of  interpretation 
of  concrete  facts,  this  Miltonic  flight  into  time  and 
space,  into  the  heavens  above,  and  into  the  bowels 

87 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

of  the  earth  beneath,  and  bodying  forth  a  veritable 
history,  a  warring  of  the  powers  of  Ught  and  dark- 
ness, with  the  triumph  of  the  angels  of  light  and  life, 
makes  Milton's  picture  seem  hollow  and  unreal. 
The  creative  and  poetic  imagination  has  undoubtedly 
already  reached  its  high- water  mark.  We  shall  prob- 
ably never  see  the  great  imaginative  works  of  the 
past  surpassed  or  even  equaled.    But  in  the  world  of 
scientific  discovery  and  interpretation,  we  see  the 
imagination  working  in  new  fields  and  under  new 
conditions,  and  achieving  triumphs  that  mark  a  new 
epoch  in  the  history  of  the  race.     Nature,  which 
once  terrified  man  and  made  a  coward  of  him,  now 
inspires  him  and  fills  him  with  love  and  enthusiasm. 
The  geologist  is  the  interpreter  of  the  records  of 
the  rocks.  From  a  bit  of  strata  here,  and  a  bit  there, 
he  re-creates  the  earth  as  it  was  in  successive  geo- 
logic periods,  as  Cuvier  reconstructed  his  extinct 
animals  from  fragments  of  their  bones;  and  the  same 
interpretative  power  of  the  imagination  is  called 
into  play  in  both  cases,  only  the  palaeontologist  has 
a  much  narrower  field  to  work  in,  and  the  back- 
ground of  his  re-creations  must  be  •supplied  by  the 
geologist. 

Everything  connected  with  the  history  of  the 
earth  is  on  such  a  vast  scale  —  such  a  scale  of  time, 
such  a  scale  of  power,  such  a  scale  of  movement  — 
that  in  trying  to  measure  it  by  our  human  standards 
and  experience  we  are  like  the  proverbial  child  with 

88 


THROUGH  THE  GEOLOGIST'S  EYES 

his  cup  on  the  seashore.  Looked  at  from  our  point 
of  view,  the  great  geological  processes  often  seem 
engaged  in  world-destruction  rather  than  in  world- 
building.  Those  oft-repeated  invasions  of  the  con- 
tinents by  the  ocean,  which  have  gone  on  from 
Archaean  times,  and  during  which  vast  areas  which 
had  been  dry  land  for  ages  were  engulfed,  seem  like 
world-wide  catastrophes.  And  no  doubt  they  were 
such  to  myriads  of  plants  and  animals  of  those 
times.  But  this  is  the  way  the  continents  grew.  All 
the  forces  of  the  invading  waters  were  engaged  in 
making  more  land. 

The  geologist  is  bold;  he  is  made  so  by  the  facts 
and  processes  with  which  he  deals;  his  daring  aflfirm- 
ations  are  inspired  by  a  study  of  the  features  of  the 
earth  about  him ;  his  time  is  not  our  time,  his  hori- 
zons are  not  our  horizons;  he  escapes  from  our  human 
experiences  and  standards  into  the  vast  out-of-doors 
of  the  geologic  forces  and  geologic  ages.  The  text 
he  deciphers  is  written  large,  written  across  the  face 
of  the  continent,  written  in  mountain-chains  and 
ocean  depths,  and  in  the  piled  strata  of  the  globe. 
We  untrained  observers  cannot  spell  out  these 
texts,  because  they  are  written  large;  our  vision  is 
adjusted  to  smaller  print;  we  are  like  the  school-boy 
who  finds  on  the  map  the  name  of  a  town  or  a  river, 
but  does  not  see  the  name  of  the  state  or  the  con- 
tinent printed  across  it.  If  the  geologist  did  not 
tell  us,  how  should  we  ever  suspect  that  probably 

89 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

where  we  now  stand  two  or  more  miles  of  strata  have 
been  worn  away  by  the  winds  and  rains;  that  the  soil 
of  our  garden,  our  farm,  represents  the  ashes  of  moun- 
tains burned  up  in  the  slow  fires  of  the  geologic  ages. 

Geology  first  gives  us  an  adequate  conception  of 
time.  The  limitations  which  shut  our  fathers  into 
the  narrow  close  of  six  thousand  years  are  taken 
down  by  this  great  science  and  we  are  turned  out 
into  the  open  of  unnumbered  millions  of  years.  Upon 
the  background  of  geologic  time  our  chronological 
time  shows  no  more  than  a  speck  upon  the  sky. 
The  whole  of  human  history  is  but  a  mere  fraction 
of  a  degree  of  this  mighty  arc.  The  Christian  era 
would  make  but  a  few  seconds  of  the  vast  cycle  of 
the  earth's  history.  Geologic  time!  The  words  seem 
to  ring  down  through  the  rocky  strata  of  the  earth's 
crust;  they  reverberate  under  the  mountains,  and 
make  them  rise  and  fall  like  the  waves  of  the  sea; 
they  open  up  vistas  through  which  we  behold  the 
continents  and  the  oceans  changing  places,  and  the 
climates  of  the  globe  shifting  like  clouds  in  the  sky; 
whole  races  and  tribes  of  animal  forms  disappear 
and  new  ones  come  upon  the  scene.  Such  a  past ! 
the  imagination  can  barely  skirt  the  edge  of  it. 
As  the  pool  in  the  field  is  to  the  sea  that  wraps  the 
earth,  so  is  the  time  of  our  histories  to  the  cycle  of 
ages  in  which  the  geologist  reckons  the  events 
of  the  earth's  history. 

Through  the  eyes  of  the  geologist  one  may  look 

90 


THROUGH  THE  GEOLOGIST'S  EYES 

upon  his  native  hills  and  see  them  as  they  were  in- 
calculable ages  ago,  and  as  they  probably  will  be 
incalculable  ages  ahead;  those  hills,  so  unchanging 
during  his  lifetime,  and  during  a  thousand  lifetimes, 
he  may  see  as  flitting  as  the  cloud  shadows  upon  the 
landscape.  Out  of  the  dark  abyss  of  geologic  time 
there  come  stalking  the  ghosts  of  lost  mountains  and 
lost  hills  and  valleys  and  plains,  or  lost  rivers  and 
lakes,  yea,  of  lost  continents;  we  see  a  procession  of 
the  phantoms  of  strange  and  monstrous  beasts, 
many  of  them  colossal  in  size  and  fearful  in  form, 
and  among  the  minor  forms  of  this  fearful  troop  of 
spectres  we  see  the  ones  that  carried  safely  forward, 
through  the  vicissitudes  of  those  ages,  the  precious 
impulse  that  was  to  eventuate  in  the  human  race. 
Only  the  geologist  knows  the  part  played  by  ero- 
sion in  shaping  the  earth's  surface  as  we  see  it.  He 
sees,  I  repeat,  the  phantoms  of  vanished  hills  and 
mountains  all  about  us.  He  sees  their  shadow  forms 
wherever  he  looks.  He  follows  out  the  lines  of  the 
flexed  or  folded  strata  where  they  come  to  the  sur- 
face, and  thus  sketches  in  the  air  the  elevation  that 
has  disappeared.  In  some  places  he  finds  that  the 
valleys  have  become  hills  and  the  hills  have  become 
valleys,  or  that  the  anticlines  and  synclines,  as  he 
calls  them,  have  changed  places  —  as  a  result  of  the 
unequal  hardness  of  the  rocks.  Over  all  the  older 
parts  of  the  country  the  original  features  have  been 
so  changed  by  erosion  that,  could  they  be  suddenly 

91 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

restored,  one  would  be  lost  on  his  home  farm.  The 
rocks  have  melted  into  soil,  as  the  snow-banks  in 
spring  melt  into  water.  The  rocks  that  remain  are 
like  fragments  of  snow  or  ice  that  have  so  far  with- 
stood the  weather.  Geologists  tell  us  that  the  great 
Appalachian  chain  has  been  in  the  course  of  the 
ages  reduced  almost  to  a  base  level  or  peneplain, 
and  then  reelevated  and  its  hills  and  mountains 
carved  out  anew. 

We  change  the  surface  of  the  earth  a  little  with 
our  engineering,  drain  a  marsh,  level  a  hill,  sweep 
away  a  forest,  or  bore  a  mountain,  but  what  are 
these  compared  with  the  changes  that  have  gone  on 
there  before  our  race  was  heard  of?  In  my  native 
mountains,  the  Catskills,  all  those  peaceful  pastoral 
valleys,  with  their  farms  and  homesteads,  lie  two 
or  three  thousand  feet  below  the  original  surface 
of  the  land.  Could  the  land  be  restored  again  to  its 
first  condition  in  Devonian  times,  probably  the 
fields  where  I  hoed  corn  and  potatoes  as  a  boy  would 
be  buried  one  or  two  miles  beneath  the  rocks. 

The  Catskills  are  residual  mountains,  or  what 
Agassiz  calls  '*  denudation  mountains."  When  we 
look  at  them  with  the  eye  of  the  geologist  we  see  the 
great  plateau  of  tableland  of  Devonian  times  out  of 
which  they  were  carved  by  the  slow  action  of  the 
sub-aerial  forces.  They  are  like  the  little  ridges  and 
mounds  of  soil  that  remain  of  your  garden-patch 
after  the  waters  of  a  cloudburst  have  swept  over  it. 

92 


THROUGH  THE  GEOLOGIST'S  EYES 

They  are  immeasurably  old,  but  they  do  not  look 
it,  except  to  the  eye  of  the  geologist.  There  is  no- 
thing decrepit  in  their  appearance,  nothing  broken, 
or  angular,  or  gaunt,  or  rawboned.  Their  long,  easy, 
flowing  lines,  their  broad,  smooth  backs,  their  deep, 
wide,  gently  sloping  valleys,  all  help  to  give  them  a 
look  of  repose  and  serenity,  as  if  the  fret  and  fever 
of  life  were  long  since  passed  with  them.  Compared 
with  the  newer  mountains  of  uplift  in  the  West, 
they  are  like  cattle  lying  down  and  ruminating  in 
the  field  beside  alert  wild  steers  with  rigid  limbs  and 
tossing  horns.  They  sleep  and  dream  with  bowed 
heads  upon  the  landscape.  Their  great  flanks  and 
backs  are  covered  with  a  deep  soil  that  nourishes  a 
very  even  growth  of  beech,  birch,  and  maple  forests. 
Though  so  old,  their  tranquillity  never  seems  to 
have  been  disturbed;  no  storm-and-stress  period 
has  left  its  mark  upon  them.  Their  strata  all  lie 
horizontal  just  as  they  were  laid  down  in  the  old 
seas,  and  nothing  but  the  slow  gentle  passage  of  the 
hand  of  time  shows  in  their  contours.  Mountains 
of  peace  and  repose,  hills  and  valleys  with  the  flow- 
ing lines  of  youth,  coming  down  to  us  from  the  fore- 
world  of  Palseozoic  time,  yet  only  rounded  and  mel- 
lowed by  the  aeons  they  have  passed  through.  Old, 
oh,  so  old,  but  young  with  verdure  and  limpid 
streams,  and  the  pastoral  spirit  of  to-day ! 

To  the  geologist  most  mountains  are  short-lived. 
When  he  finds  great  sturdy  ranges,  like  the  Alps, 

93 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

the  Andes,  the  Himalayas,  he  knows  they  are  young, 
—  mere  boys.  When  they  get  old,  they  will  be  cut 
down,  and  their  pride  and  glory  gone.  A  few  more 
of  these  geologic  years  and  they  will  be  reduced  to 
a  peneplain,  —  only  their  stumps  left.  This  seems 
to  hold  truer  of  mountains  that  are  wrinkles  in  the 
earth's  crust  —  squeezed  up  and  crumpled  strati- 
fied rock,  such  as  most  of  the  great  mountain- 
systems  are  —  than  of  mountains  of  erosion  like 
the  Catskills,  or  of  upheaval  Uke  the  Adirondacks. 
The  crushed  and  folded  and  dislocated  strata  are 
laid  open  to  the  weather  as  the  horizontal  strata, 
and  as  the  upheaved  masses  of  Archaean  rock  are 
not.  Moreover,  strata  of  unequal  hardness  are  ex- 
posed, and  this  condition  favors  rapid  erosion. 

In  imagination  the  geologist  is  present  at  the 
birth  of  whole  mountain-ranges.  He  sees  them  ges- 
tating  in  the  womb  of  their  mother,  the  sea.  Where 
our  great  Appalachian  range  now  stands,  he  sees, 
in  the  great  interior  sea  of  Palseozoic  time,  what  he 
calls  a  "geosyncline,"  a  vast  trough,  or  cradle,  being 
slowly  filled  with  sediment  brought  down  by  the 
rivers  from  the  adjoining  shores.  These  sediments 
accumulate  to  the  enormous  depth  of  twenty-five 
thousand  feet,  and  harden  into  rock.  Then  in  the 
course  of  time  they  are  squeezed  together  and  forced 
up  by  the  contraction  of  the  earth's  crust,  and  thus 
the  Appalachians  are  born.  When  Mother  Earth 
takes  a  new  hitch  in  her  belt,  her  rocky  garment 

94 


THROUGH  THE  GEOLOGIST'S  EYES 

takes  on  new  wrinkles.  Just  why  the  earth's  crust 
should  wrinkle  along  lines  of  rock  of  such  enormous 
thickness  is  not  a  little  puzzling.  But  we  are  told  it 
is  because  this  heavy  mass  of  sediment  presses  the 
sea-bottom  down  till  the  rocks  are  fused  by  the  in- 
ternal heat  of  the  earth  and  thus  a  line  of  weakness 
is  estabHshed.  In  any  case  the  earth's  forces  act 
as  a  whole,  and  the  earth's  crust  at  the  thickest 
points  is  so  comparatively  thin  —  probably  not 
much  more  than  a  heavy  sheet  of  cardboard  over 
a  six-inch  globe  —  that  these  forces  seem  to  go  their 
own  way  regardless  of  such  minor  differences. 

The  Alps  and  the  Himalayas,  much  younger  than 
our  Appalachians,  were  also  begotten  and  nursed  in 
the  cradle  of  a  vast  geosyncline  in  the  Tertiary  seas. 
We  speak  of  the  birth  of  a  mountain-range  in  terms 
of  a  common  human  occurrence,  or  as  if  it  were  an 
event  that  might  be  witnessed,  measurable  in  hu- 
man years  or  days,  whereas  it  is  an  event  measurable 
only  in  geologic  periods,  and  geologic  periods  are 
marked  off  only  on  the  dial-face  of  eternity.  The 
old  Hebrew  writer  gave  but  a  faint  image  of  it  when 
he  said  that  with  the  Lord  a  thousand  years  are  as 
one  day;  it  is  hardly  one  hour  of  the  slow  beat  of 
that  clock  whose  hours  mark  the  periods  of  the 
earth's  development. 

The  whole  long  period  during  which  the  race  of 
man  has  been  rushing  about,  tickling  and  scratch- 
ing and  gashing  the  surface  of  the  globe,  would  make 

95 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

but  a  small  fraction  of  one  of  the  days  that  make  up 
the  periods  with  which  the  geologist  deals.  And  the 
span  of  human  life,  how  it  dwindles  to  a  point  in  the 
face  of  the  records  of  the  rocks !  Doubtless  the  birth 
of  some  of  the  mountain-systems  of  the  globe  is  still 
going  on,  and  we  suspect  it  not;  an  elevation  of  one 
foot  in  a  century  would  lift  up  the  Sierra  or  the 
Rocky  Mountains  in  a  comparatively  short  geologic 
period. 

II 

It  was  the  geologist  that  emboldened  Tennyson 

to  sing,  — 

"The  hills  are  shadows  and  they  flow 

From  form  to  form  and  nothing  stands. 
They  melt  like  mists,  the  solid  lands. 
Like  clouds  they  shape  themselves  and  go.'* 

But  some  hills  flow  much  faster  than  others.  Hills 
made  up  of  the  latest  or  newest  formations  seem  to 
take  to  themselves  wings  the  fastest. 

The  Archaean  hills  and  mountains,  how  slowly 
they  melt  away!  In  the  Adirondacks,  in  northern 
New  England,  in  the  Highlands  of  the  Hudson,  they 
still  hold  their  heads  high  and  have  something  of  the 
vigor  of  their  prime. 

The  most  enduring  rocks  are  the  oldest;  and  the 
most  perishable  are,  as  a  rule,  the  youngest.  It  takes 
time  to  season  and  harden  the  rocks,  as  it  does  men. 
Then  the  earlier  rocks  seem  to  have  had  better  stuff 
in  them.  They  are  nearer  the  paternal  granite;  and 

96 


THROUGH  THE  GEOLOGIST'S  EYES 

the  primordial  seas  that  mothered  them  were,  no 
doubt,  richer  in  the  various  mineral  solutions  that 
knitted  and  compacted  the  sedimentary  deposits. 
The  Cretaceous  formations  melt  away  almost  like 
snow.  I  fancy  that  the  ocean  now,  compared  with 
the  earlier  condition  when  it  must  have  been  so 
saturated  with  mineral  elements,  is  like  thrice- 
skimmed  milk. 

The  geologist  is  not  stinted  for  time.  He  deals  with 
big  figures.  It  is  refreshing  to  see  him  dealing  out  his 
years  so  liberally.  Do  you  want  a  million  or  two  to 
account  for  this  or  that.^^  You  shall  have  it  for  the 
asking.  He  has  an  enormous  balance  in  the  bank 
of  Time,  and  he  draws  upon  it  to  suit  his  purpose. 
In  human  history  a  thousand  years  is  a  long  time. 
Ten  thousand  years  wipe  out  human  history  com- 
pletely. Ten  thousand  more,  and  we  are  probably 
among  the  rude  cave-men  or  river-drift  men.  One 
hundred  thousand,  and  we  are  —  where?  Probably 
among  the  simian  ancestors  of  man.  A  million  years, 
and  we  are  probably  in  Eocene  or  Miocene  times, 
among  the  huge  and  often  grotesque  mammals,  and 
our  ancestor,  a  little  creature,  probably  of  the 
marsupial  kind,  is  skulking  about  and  hiding  from 
the  great  carnivorous  beasts  that  would  devour  him. 

"Little  man,  least  of  all, 
Among  the  legs  of  his  guardians  tall. 
Walked  about  with  puzzled  look. 
Him  by  the  hand  dear  Nature  took, 

97 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

Dearest  Nature,  strong  and  kind. 
Whispered,  *  Darling,  never  mind ! 
To-morrow  they  will  wear  another  face. 
The  founder  thou;  these  are  thy  race! '  " 

I  fancy  Emerson  would  be  surprised  and  probably 
displeased  at  the  use  I  have  made  of  his  lines.  I  re- 
member once  hearing  him  say  that  his  teacher  in 
such  matters  as  I  am  here  touching  upon  was  Agas- 
siz,  and  not  Darwin.  Yet  did  he  not  write  that 
audacious  line  about  "the  worm  striving  to  be 
man"?  And  Nature  certainly  took  his  "little 
man"  by  the  hand  and  led  him  forward,  and  on  the 
morrow  the  rest  of  the  animal  creation  "wore  an- 
other face." 

HI 

In  my  geological  studies  I  have  had  a  good  deal 
of  trouble  with  the  sedimentary  rocks,  trying  to 
trace  their  genealogy  and  getting  them  properly 
fathered  and  mothered.  I  do  not  think  the  geologists 
fully  appreciate  what  a  difficult  problem  the  origin 
of  these  rocks  presents  to  the  lay  mind.  They  bulk 
so  large,  while  the  mass  of  original  crystalline  rocks 
from  which  they  are  supposed  to  have  been  derived 
is  so  small  in  comparison.  In  the  case  of  our  own 
continent  we  have,  to  begin  with,  about  two  million 
of  square  miles  of  Archaean  rocks  in  detached  lines 
and  masses,  rising  here  and  there  above  the  prim- 
ordial ocean;  a  large  triangular  mass  in  Canada, 
and  two  broken  lines  of  smaller  masses  running 

98 


THROUGH  THE  GEOLOGIST'S  EYES 

south  from  it  on  each  side  of  the  continent,  inclosing 
a  vast  interior  sea  between  them.  To  end  with,  we 
have  the  finished  continent  of  eight  million  or  more 
square  miles,  of  an  average  height  of  two  thousand 
feet  above  the  sea,  built  up  or  developed  from  and 
around  these  granite  centres  very  much  as  the  body 
is  built  up  and  around  the  bones,  and  of  such  pro- 
digious weight  that  some  of  our  later  geologists  seek 
to  account  for  the  continental  submarine  shelf  that 
surrounds  the  continent  on  the  theory  that  the  land 
has  slowly  crept  out  into  the  sea  under  the  pressure 
of  its  own  weight.    And  all  this,  —  to  say  nothing 
of  the  vast  amount  of  rock,  in  some  places  a  mile 
or  two  in  thickness,  that  has  been  eroded  from  the 
land  surfaces  of  the  globe  in  later  geological  time,  and 
now  lies  buried  in  the  seas  and  lakes,  —  we  are  told, 
is  the  contribution  of  those  detached  portions  of 
Archsean  rock  that  first  rose  above  the  primordial 
seas.  It  is  a  greater  miracle  than  that  of  the  loaves 
and  the  fishes.    We  have  vastly  more  to  end  with 
than  we  had  to  begin  with.  The  more  the  rocks  have 
been  destroyed,  the  more  they  have  increased;  the 
more  the  waters  have  devoured  them,  the  more  they 
have  multiplied  and  waxed  strong. 

Either  the  geologists  have  greatly  underestimated 
the  amount  of  Archsean  rock  above  the  waters  at  the 
start,  or  else  there  are  factors  in  the  problem  that 
have  not  been  taken  into  the  account.  Lyell  seems 
to  have  appreciated  the  difficulties  of  the  problem, 

99 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

and,  to  account  for  the  forty  thousand  feet  of  sedi- 
ment deposited  in  Palaeozoic  times  in  the  region 
of  the  Appalachians,  he  presupposes  a  neighboring 
continent  to  the  east,  probably  formed  of  Lauren- 
tian  rocks,  where  now  rolls  the  Atlantic.  But  if 
such  a  continent  once  existed,  would  not  some  ves- 
tige of  it  still  remain?  The  fact  that  no  trace  of  it 
has  been  found,  it  seems  to  me,  invalidates  Lyell's 

theory. 

Archsean  time  in  geologic  history  answers  to  pre- 
historic time  in  human  history;  all  is  dark  and  uncer- 
tain, though  we  are  probably  safe  in  assuming  that 
there  was  more  strife  and  turmoil  among  the  earth- 
building  forces  than  there  has  ever  been  since.  The 
body  of  unstratified  rock  within  the  limits  of  North 
America  may  have  been  much  greater  than  is  sup- 
posed, but  it  seems  to  me  impossible  that  it  could 
have  been  anything  like  as  massive  as  the  continent 
now  is.  If  this  had  been  the  case  there  would  have 
been  no  great  interior  sea,  and  no  wide  sea-margins 
in  which  the  sediments  of  the  stratified  rocks  could 
have  been  deposited.  More  than  four  fifths  of  the 
continent  is  of  secondary  origin  and  shows  that  vast 
geologic  eras  went  to  the  making  of  it. 

It  is  equally  hard  to  believe  that  the  primary  or 
igneous  rocks,  where  they  did  appear,  were  sufla- 
ciently  elevated  to  have  furnished  through  erosion 
the  all  but  incalculable  amount  of  material  that 
went  to  the  making  of  our  vast  land  areas.    But 

100 


THROUGH  THE  GEOLOGIST'S  EYES 

the  geologists  give  me  the  impression  that  this  is 
what  we  are  to  beHeve. 

Chamberhn  and  SaHsbury,  in  their  recent  col- 
lege geology,  teach  that  each  new  formation  implies 
the  destruction  of  an  equivalent  amount  of  older 
rock  —  every  system  being  entirely  built  up  out  of 
the  older  one  beneath  it.  Lyell  and  Dana  teach  the 
same  thing.  If  this  were  true,  could  there  have  been 
any  continental  growth  at  all?  Could  a  city  grow 
by  the  process  of  pulling  down  the  old  buildings  for 
material  to  build  the  new?  If  the  geology  is  correct, 
I  fail  to  see  how  there  would  be  any  more  land  sur- 
face to-day  then  there  was  in  Archaean  times.  Each 
new  formation  would  only  have  replaced  the  old 
from  which  it  came.  The  Silurian  would  only  have 
made  good  the  waste  of  the  Cambrian,  and  the  De- 
vonian made  good  the  waste  of  the  Silurian,  and  so 
on  to  the  top  of  the  series,  and  in  the  end  we  should 
still  have  been  at  the  foot  of  the  stairs.  That  vast 
interior  sea  that  in  Archaean  times  stretched  from 
the  rudimentary  Appalachian  Mountains  to  the 
rudimentary  Rocky  Mountains,  and  which  is  now 
the  heart  of  the  continent,  would  still  have  been  a 
part  of  the  primordial  ocean.  But  instead  of  that, 
this  sea  is  filled  and  piled  up  with  sedimentary  rocks 
thousands  of  feet  thick,  that  have  given  birth  on 
their  surfaces  to  thousands  of  square  miles  of  as 
fertile  soil  as  the  earth  holds. 

That  the  original  crystalline  rocks  played  the 

101 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

major  part  in  the  genealogy  of  the  subsequent  strati- 
fied rocks,  it  would  be  folly  to  deny.  But  it  seems  to 
me  that  chemical  and  cosmic  processes,  working 
through  the  air  and  the  water,  have  contributed 
more  than  they  have  been  credited  with. 

It  looks  as  if  in  all  cases  when  the  soil  is  carried 
to  the  sea-bottom  as  sediment,  and  again,  during 
the  course  of  ages,  consolidated  into  rocks,  the 
rocks  thus  formed  have  exceeded  in  bulk  the  rocks 
that  gave  them  birth.  Something  analogous  to 
vital  growth  takes  place.  It  seems  as  if  the  original 
granite  centres  set  the  world-building  forces  at 
work.  They  served  as  nuclei  around  which  the 
materials  gathered.  These  rocks  bred  other  rocks, 
and  these  still  others,  and  yet  others,  till  the  frame- 
work of  the  land  was  fairly  established.  They  were 
like  the  pioneer  settlers  who  plant  homes  here  and 
there  in  the  wilderness,  and  then  in  due  time  all  the 
land  is  peopled. 

The  granite  is  the  Adam  rock,  and  through  a  long 
line  of  descent  the  major  part  of  all  the  other  rocks 
directly  or  indirectly  may  be  traced.  Thus  the  gran- 
ite begot  the  Algonquin,  the  Algonquin  begot  the 
Cambrian,  the  Cambrian  begot  the  Silurian,  the 
Silurian  begot  the  Devonian,  and  so  on  up  through 
the  Carboniferous,  the  Permian,  the  Mesozoic  rocks, 
the  Tertiary  rocks,  to  the  latest  Quaternary  de- 
posit. But  the  curious  thing  about  it  all  is  the  enor- 
mous progeny  from  so  small  a  beginning;  the  rocks 

102 


THROUGH  THE   GEOLOGIST'S  EYES 

seem  really  to  have  grown  and  multiplied  like  or- 
ganic beings;  the  seed  of  the  granite  seems  to  have 
fertilized  the  whole  world  of  waters,  and  in  due  time 
they  brought  forth  this  huge  family  of  stratified 
rocks.  There  stands  the  Archsean  Adam,  his  head 
and  chest  in  Canada,  his  two  unequal  legs  running, 
one  down  the  Pacific  coast,  and  one  down  the  At- 
lantic Coast,  and  from  his  loins,  we  are  told,  all  the 
progeny  of  rocks  and  soils  that  make  up  the  conti- 
nent have  sprung,  one  generation  succeeding  an- 
other in  regular  order.  His  latest  offspring  is  in  the 
South  and  Southwest,  and  in  the  interior.  These 
are  the  new  countries,  geologically  speaking,  as  well 
as  humanly  speaking. 

The  great  interior  sea,  epicontinental,  the  geolo- 
gists call  it,  seems  to  have  been  fermenting  and 
laboring  for  untold  seons  in  building  up  these  parts 
of  the  continent.  In  the  older  Eastern  States  we  find 
the  sons  and  grandsons  of  the  old  Adam  granite;  but 
in  the  South  and  West  we  find  his  offspring  of  the 
twentieth  or  twenty-fifth  generation,  and  so  unlike 
their  forebears;  the  Permian  rocks,  for  instance,  and 
the  Cretaceous  rocks,  are  soft  and  unenduring,  for 
the  most  part.  The  later  slates,  too,  are  degener- 
ates, and  much  of  the  sandstones  have  the  hearts  of 
prodigals.  In  the  Bad  Lands  of  Arizona  I  could  have 
cut  my  way  into  some  of  the  Eocene  formations 
with  my  pocket-knife.  Apparently  the  farther  away 
we  get  from  the  parent  granite,  the  more  easily  is 

103 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

the  rock  eroded.  Nearly  all  the  wonderful  and  beau- 
tiful sculpturing  of  the  rocks  in  the  West  and  South- 
west is  in  rocks  of  comparatively  recent  date. 

Can  we  say  that  all  the  organic  matter  of  our 
time  is  from  preexisting  organic  matter?  one  or- 
ganism torn  down  to  build  up  another?  that  the  be- 
ginning of  the  series  was  as  great  as  the  end?  There 
may  have  been  as  much  matter  in  a  state  of  vital 
organization  in  Carboniferous  or  in  Cretaceous  times 
as  in  our  own,  but  there  is  certainly  more  now  than 
in  early  Palaeozoic  times.  Yet  every  grain  of  this 
matter  has  existed  somewhere  in  some  form  for  all 
time.  Or  we  might  ask  if  all  the  wealth  of  our  day 
is  from  preexisting  wealth  —  one  fortune  pulled 
down  to  build  up  another,  —  too  often  the  case, 
it  is  true,  —  thus  passing  the  accumulated  wealth 
along  from  one  generation  to  another.  On  the  con- 
trary, has  there  not  been  a  steady  gain  of  that  we 
call  wealth  through  the  ingenuity  and  the  industry 
of  man  directed  towards  the  latent  wealth  of  the 
earth?  In  a  parallel  manner  has  there  been  a  gain 
in  the  bulk  of  the  secondary  rocks  through  the  ac- 
tion of  the  world-building  forces  directed  to  the  sea, 
the  air,  and  the  preexisting  rocks.  Had  there  been 
no  gain,  the  fact  would  suggest  the  ill  luck  of  a  man 
investing  his  capital  in  business  and  turning  it  over 
and  over,  and  having  no  more  money  at  the  end  than 
he  had  in  the  beginning. 

Nothing  is  in  the  sedimentary  rock  that  was  not 

104 


THROUGH  THE  GEOLOGIST'S  EYES 

at  one  time  in  the  original  granite,  or  in  the  primor- 
dial seas,  or  in  the  primordial  atmosphere,  or  in 
the  heavens  above,  or  in  the  interior  of  the  earth 
beneath.  We  must  sweep  the  heavens,  strain  the 
seas,  and  leach  the  air,  to  obtain  all  this  material. 
Evidently  the  growth  of  these  rocks  has  been  mainly 
a  chemical  process  —  a  chemical  organization  of 
preexisting  material,  as  much  so  as  the  growth  of 
a  plant  or  a  tree  or  an  animal.  The  color  and  tex- 
ture and  volume  of  each  formation  differ  so  radically 
from  those  of  the  one  immediately  before  it  as 
to  suggest  something  more  than  a  mere  mechanical 
derivation  of  one  from  the  other.  New  factors, 
new  sources,  are  implied.  "The  farther  we  recede 
from  the  present  time,"  says  Lyell,  "and  the  higher 
the  antiquity  of  the  formations  which  we  exam- 
ine, the  greater  are  the  changes  which  the  sedi- 
mentary deposits  have  undergone."  Above  all  have 
chemical  processes  produced  changes.  This  con- 
stant passage  of  the  mineral  elements  of  the  rocks 
through  the  cycle  of  erosion,  sedimentation,  and  re- 
induration  has  exposed  them  to  the  action  of  the 
air,  the  light,  the  sea,  and  has  thus  undoubtedly 
brought  about  a  steady  growth  in  their  volume  and 
a  constant  change  in  their  color  and  texture.  Marl 
and  clay  and  green  sand  and  salt  and  gypsum  and 
shale,  all  have  their  genesis,  all  came  down  to  us  in 
some  way  or  in  some  degree,  from  the  aboriginal 
crystalline  rocks;  but  what  transformations  and 

105 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

transmutations  they  have  undergone!  They  have 
passed  through  Nature's  laboratory  and  taken  on 
new  forms  and  characteristics. 

"All  sediments  deposited  in  the  sea,"  says  my 
geology,  "undergo  more  or  less  chemical  change," 
and  many  chemical  changes  involve  notable  changes 
in  volume  of  the  mineral  matter  concerned.  It  has 
been  estimated  that  the  conversion  of  granite  rock 
into  soil  increases  its  volume  eighty-eight  per  cent, 
largely  as  the  result  of  hydration,  or  the  taking  up  of 
water  in  the  chemical  union.  The  processes  of  oxid- 
ation and  carbonation  are  also  expansive  processes. 
Whether  any  of  this  gain  in  volume  is  lost  in  the  pro- 
cess of  sedimentation  and  reconsolidation,  I  do  not 
know.  Probably  all  the  elements  that  water  takes 
from  the  rocks  by  solution,  it  returns  to  them  when 
the  disintegrated  parts,  in  the  form  of  sediment  in  the 
sea,  is  again  converted  into  strata.  It  is  in  this  cycle 
of  rock  disintegration  and  rock  re-formation  that 
the  processes  of  life  go  on.  Without  the  decay  of  the 
rock  there  could  be  no  life  on  the  land.  Water  and 
air  are  always  the  go-betweens  of  the  organic  and 
inorganic.  After  the  rains  have  depleted  the  rocks 
of  their  soluble  parts  and  carried  them  to  the  sea, 
they  come  back  and  aid  vegetable  life  to  unlock  and 
appropriate  other  soluble  parts,  and  thus  build  up 
the  vegetable  and,  indirectly,  the  animal  world. 

That  the  growth  of  the  continents  owes  much  to 
the  denudation  of  the  sea-bottom,  brought  about  by 

106 


THROUGH  THE   GEOLOGIST'S  EYES 

the  tides  and  the  ocean-currents,  which  were  prob- 
ably much  more  powerful  in  early  than  in  late  geo- 
logic times,  and  to  submarine  mineral  springs  and 
volcanic  eruptions  of  ashes  and  mud,  admits  of  little 
doubt.  That  it  owes  much  to  extra-terrestrial  sources 
—  to  meteorites  and  meteoric  dust  —  also  admits 
of  little  doubt. 

It  seems  reasonable  that  earlier  in  the  history  of 
the  evolution  of  our  solar  system  there  should  have 
been  much  more  meteoric  matter  drifting  through 
the  interplanetary  spaces  than'  during  the  later  ages, 
and  that  a  large  amount  of  this  matter  should  have 
found  its  way  to  the  earth,  in  the  form  either  of  solids 
or  of  gases.  Probably  much  more  material  has  been 
contributed  by  volcanic  eruptions  than  there  is  any 
evidence  of  apparent.  The  amount  of  mineral  mat- 
ter held  in  solution  by  the  primordial  seas  must  have 
been  enormous.  The  amount  of  rock  laid  down  in 
Palaeozoic  times  is  estimated  at  fifty  thousand  feet, 
and  of  this  thirteen  thousand  feet  were  limestone; 
while  the  amount  laid  down  in  Mesozoic  times, 
for  aught  we  know  a  period  quite  as  long,  amounts  to 
eight  thousand  feet,  indicating,  it  seems  to  me,  that 
the  deposition  of  sediment  went  on  much  more  rap- 
idly in  early  geologic  times.  We  are  nearer  the  begin- 
ning of  things.  All  chemical  processes  in  the  earth's 
crust  were  probably  more  rapid.  Doubtless  the  rain- 
fall was  more,  but  the  land  areas  must  have  been  less. 
The  greater  amount  of  carbon  dioxide  in  the  air  dur^ 

107 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

ing  Palseozoic  times  would  have  favored  more  rapid 
carbonation.  When  granite  is  dissolved  by  weather- 
ing, carbon  unites  with  the  potash,  the  soda,  the 
lime,  the  magnesia,  and  the  iron,  and  turns  them 
into  carbonates  and  swells  their  bulk.  The  one  thing 
that  is  passed  along  from  formation  to  formation  un- 
changed is  the  quartz  sand.  Quartz  is  tough,  and  the 
sand  we  find  to-day  is  practically  the  same  that  was 
dissolved  out  of  the  first  crystalline  rocks. 

Take  out  of  the  soil  and  out  of  the  rocks  all  that 
they  owe  to  the  air,  —  the  oxygen  and  the  carbon, 
—  and  how  would  they  dwindle !  The  limestone 
rocks  would  practically  disappear. 

Probably  not  less  that  one  fourth  of  all  the  sedi- 
mentary rocks  are  limestone,  which  is  of  animal 
origin.  How  much  of  the  lime  of  which  these  rocks 
were  built  was  leached  out  of  the  land-areas,  and 
how  much  was  held  in  solution  by  the  original  sea- 
water,  is  of  course  a  question.  But  all  the  carbon 
they  hold  came  out  of  the  air.  The  waters  of  the 
primordial  ocean  were  probably  highly  charged  with 
mineral  matter,  with  various  chlorides  and  sulphates 
and  carbonates,  such  as  the  sulphate  of  soda,  the 
sulphate  of  lime,  the  sulphate  of  magnesia,  the 
chloride  of  sodium,  and  the  like.  The  chloride  of 
sodium,  or  salt,  remains,  while  most  of  the  other 
compounds  have  been  precipitated  through  the 
agency  of  minute  forms  of  life,  and  now  form  parts 
of  the  soil  and  of  the  stratified  rocks  beneath  it. 

108 


THROUGH  THE  GEOLOGIST'S  EYES 

If  the  original  granite  is  the  father  of  the  rocks, 
the  sea  is  the  mother.  In  her  womb  they  were  ges- 
tated  and  formed.  Had  not  this  seesaw  of  land 
and  ocean  taken  place,  there  could  have  been  no  con- 
tinental growth.  Every  time  the  land  took  a  bath 
in  the  sea,  it  came  up  enriched  and  augmented.  Each 
new  layer  of  rocky  strata  taken  on  showed  a  marked 
change  in  color  and  texture.  It  was  a  kind  of  -evolu- 
tion from  that  which  preceded  it.  Whether  the  land 
always  went  down,  or  whether  the  sea  at  times  came 
up,  by  reason  of  some  disturbance  of  the  ocean  floors 
in  its  abysmal  depths,  we  have  no  means  of  knowing. 
In  any  case,  most  of  the  land  has  taken  a  sea  bath 
many  times,  not  all  taking  the  plunge  at  the  same 
time,  but  different  parts  going  down  in  successive 
geologic  ages.  The  original  granite  upheavals  in 
British  America,  and  in  New  York  and  New  Eng- 
land, seem  never  to  have  taken  this  plunge,  except 
an  area  about  Lake  Superior  which  geologists  say 
has  gone  down  four  or  five  times.  The  Lauren- 
tian  and  Adirondack  ranges  have  never  been  in 
pickle  in  the  sea  since  they  first  saw  the  light.  In 
most  other  parts  of  the  continent,  the  seesaw  be- 
tween the  sea  and  the  land  has  gone  on  steadily 
from  the  first,  and  has  been  the  chief  means  of  the 
upbuilding  of  the  land. 

To  the  slow  and  oft-repeated  labor-throes  of  the 
sea  we  owe  the  continents.  But  the  sea  devours  her 
children.    Large  areas,  probably  continental  in  ex- 

109 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

tent,  have  gone  down  and  have  not  yet  come  up,  if 
they  ever  will.  The  great  Mississippi  Valley  was 
under  water  and  above  water  time  after  time  during 
the  Palaeozoic  period.  The  last  great  invasion  of 
the  land  by  the  sea,  and  probably  the  greatest  of  all, 
seems  to  have  been  in  Cretaceous  times,  at  the  end 
of  the  Mesozoic  period.  There  were  many  minor  in- 
vasions during  Tertiary  times,  but  none  on  so  large 
a  scale  as  this  Cretaceous  invasion.  At  this  time  a 
large  part  of  North  and  South  America,  and  of  Eu- 
rope, and  parts  of  Asia  and  Australia  went  under 
the  ocean.  It  was  as  if  the  earth  had  exhaled  her 
breath  and  let  her  abdomen  fall.  The  sea  united  the 
Gulf  of  Mexico  with  the  Arctic  Ocean,  and  covered 
the  Prairie  and  the  Gulf  States  and  came  up  over 
New  Jersey  to  the  foot  of  the  Archaean  Highlands. 
This  great  marine  inundation  probably  took  place 
several  million  years  ago.  It  was  this  visitation  of 
the  sea  that  added  the  vast  chalk  beds  to  England 
and  France.  In  parts  of  this  country  limestone  beds 
five  or  six  thousand  feet  thick  were  laid  down,  as  well 
as  extensive  chalk  beds.  The  earth  seems  to  have 
taken  another  hitch  in  her  girdle  during  this  era. 
As  the  land  went  down,  the  mountains  came  up. 
Most  of  the  great  Western  mountain-chains  were 
formed  during  this  movement,  and  the  mountains  of 
Mexico  were  pushed  up.  The  Alps  were  still  under 
the  sea,  but  the  Sierra  and  the  AUeghanies  were 
again  lifted. 

110 


THROUGH  THE  GEOLOGIST'S  EYES 

It  is  very  interesting  to  me  to  know  that  in  Colo- 
rado charred  wood,  and  even  charcoal,  have  been 
found  in  Cretaceous  deposits.  The  fact  seems  to  give 
a  human  touch  to  that  long-gone  time.  It  was,  of 
course,  long  ages  before  the  evolution  of  man,  as 
man,  had  taken  place,  yet  such  is  the  power  of  as- 
sociation, that  those  charred  sticks  instantly  call 
him  to  mind,  as  if  we  had  come  upon  the  place  of  his 
last  campfire.  At  any  rate,  it  is  something  to  know 
that  man,  when  he  did  come,  did  not  have  to  dis- 
cover or  invent  fire,  but  that  this  element,  which  has 
played  such  a  large  part  in  his  development  and 
civilization,  was  here  before  him,  waiting,  like  so 
many  other  things  in  nature,  to  be  his  servant  and 
friend.  As  Vulcan  was  everywhere  rampant  during 
this  age,  throwing  out  enough  lava  in  India  alone 
to  put  a  lava  blanket  four  or  five  feet  thick  over  the 
whole  surface  of  the  globe,  it  was  probably  this  fire 
that  charred  the  wood.  It  would  be  interesting  to 
know  if  these  enormous  lava-flows  always  followed 
the  subsidence  of  some  part  of  the  earth's  crust.  In 
Cretaceous  times  both  the  subsidence  and  the  lava- 
flows  seem  to  have  been  worldwide. 

IV 

We  seem  to  think  that  the  earth  has  sown  all  her 
wild  oats,  that  her  riotous  youth  is  far  behind  her, 
and  that  she  is  now  passing  into  a  serene  old  age. 
Had  we  lived  during  any  of  the  great  periods  of  the 

111 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

past,  we  might  have  had  the  same  impression,  so 
tranquil,  for  the  most  part,  has  been  the  earth's  his- 
tory, so  slow  and  rhythmical  have  been  the  beats 
of  the  great  clock  of  time.  We  see  this  in  the  homo- 
geneity of  the  stratified  rocks,  layer  upon  layer  for 
thousands  of  feet  as  uniform  in  texture  and  quality 
as  the  goods  a  modern  factory  turns  out,  every  yard 
of  it  like  every  other  yard.  No  hitch  or  break  any- 
where. The  bedding-planes  of  many  kinds  of  rock 
occur  at  as  regular  intervals  as  if  they  had  been  de- 
termined by  some  kind  of  machinery.  Here,  on  the 
formation  where  I  live,  there  are  alternate  layers  of 
slate  and  sandstone,  three  or  four  inches  thick,  for 
thousands  of  feet  in  extent;  they  succeed  each  other 
as  regularly  as  the  bricks  and  mortar  in  a  brick  wall, 
and  are  quite  as  homogeneous.  What  does  this  mean 
but  that  for  an  incalculable  period  the  processes  of 
erosion  and  deposition  went  on  as  tranquilly  as  a 
summer  day?  There  was  no  strike  among  the  work- 
men, and  no  change  in  the  plan  of  the  building,  or 
in  the  material. 

The  Silurian  limestone,  the  old  red  sandstone, 
the  Hamilton  flag,  the  Oneida  conglomerate,  where 
I  have  known  them,  are  as  homogeneous  as  a  snow- 
bank, or  as  the  ice  on  a  mountain  lake;  grain  upon 
grain,  all  from  the  same  source  in  each  case,  and 
sifted  and  sorted  by  the  same  agents,  and  the  finished 
product  as  uniform  in  color  and  quality  as  the  out- 
put of  some  great  mill. 

112 


THROUGH  THE  GEOLOGIST'S  EYES 

Then,  after  a  vast  interval,  there  comes  a  break: 
something  hke  an  end  and  a  new  beginning,  as  if  one 
day  of  creation  were  finished  and  a  new  one  begun. 
The  different  formations  he  unconformably  upon 
each  other,  which  means  revolution  of  some  sort. 
There  has  been  a  strike  or  a  riot  in  the  great  mill, 
or  it  has  lain  idle  for  a  long  period,  and  when  it  has 
resumed,  a  different  product  is  the  result.  Some- 
thing happened  between  each  two  layers.   What? 

Though  in  remote  geological  ages  the  earth- 
building  and  earth-shaping  forces  were  undoubtedly 
more  active  than  they  are  now,  and  periods  of  de- 
formation and  upheaval  were  more  frequent,  yet 
had  we  lived  in  any  of  those  periods  we  should  prob- 
ably have  found  the  course  of  nature,  certainly  when 
measured  by  human  generations,  as  even  and  tran- 
quil as  we  find  it  to-day.  The  great  movements  are 
so  slow  and  gentle,  for  the  most  part,  that  we  should 
not  have  been  aware  of  them  had  we  been  on  the 
spot.  Once  in  a  million  or  a  half -million  years  there 
may  have  been  terrific  earthquakes  and  volcanic 
eruptions,  such  as  seem  to  have  taken  place  in  Ter- 
tiary time,  and  at  the  end  of  the  Palaeozoic  period. 
Yet  the  vast  stretches  of  time  between  were  evi- 
dently times  of  tranquillity. 

It  is  probable  that  the  great  glacial  winter  of 
Pleistocene  times  came  on  as  gradually  as  our  own 
winter,  or  through  a  long  period  of  slowly  falling 
temperature,  and  as  it  seems  to  have  been  many 

113 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

hundred  thousand  times  as  long,  this  preceding 
period,  or  great  fall,  was  probably  equally  long 
—  so  long  that  the  whole  of  recorded  human  history 
would  form  but  a  small  fraction  of  it.  It  may  easily 
be,  I  think,  that  we  are  now  Uving  in  the  spring  of  the 
great  cycle  of  geologic  seasons.  The  great  ice-sheet 
has  withdrawn  into  the  Far  North  like  snowbanks 
that  linger  in  our  wood  in  late  spring,  where  it  still 
covers  Greenland  as  it  once  covered  this  country. 
When  the  season  of  summer  is  reached,  some  hun- 
dreds of  thousands  of  years  hence,  it  may  be  that 
tropical  life,  both  animal  and  vegetable,  will  again 
flourish  on  the  shores  of  the  Arctic  Ocean,  as  it  did 
in  Tertiary  times.  And  all  this  change  will  come 
about  so  quietly  and  so  slowly  that  nobody  will 
suspect  it. 

That  the  crust  of  the  earth  is  becoming  more  and 
more  stable  seems  a  natural  conclusion,  but  that  all 
folding  and  shearing  and  disruption  of  the  strata 
are  at  an  end,  is  a  conclusion  we  cannot  reach  in  the 
face  of  the  theory  that  the  earth  is  shrinking  as  it 
cools. 

The  earth  cools  and  contracts  with  almost  infinite 
slowness,  and  the  great  crustal  changes  that  take 
place  go  on,  for  the  most  part,  so  quietly  and  gently 
that  we  should  not  suspect  them  were  we  present  on 
the  spot,  and  long  generations  would  not  suspect 
them.  Elevations  have  taken  place  across  the  beds 
of  rivers  without  deflecting  the  course  of  the  river; 

114 


THROUGH  THE   GEOLOGIST'S  EYES 

the  process  was  so  slow  that  the  river  sawed  down 
through  the  rock  as  fast  as  it  came  up.  Nearly  all 
the  great  cosmic  and  terrestrial  changes  and  revolu- 
tions are  veiled  from  us  by  this  immeasurable  lapse 
of  time. 

Any  prediction  about  the  permanence  of  the  land 
as  we  know  it,  or  as  the  race  has  known  it,  or  of  our 
immunity  from  earthquakes  or  volcanic  eruptions, 
or  of  a  change  of  climate,  or  of  any  cosmic  catas- 
trophe, based  on  human  experience,  is  vain  and 
worthless.  What  is  or  has  been  in  man's  time  is 
no  criterion  as  to  what  will  be  in  God's  time.  The 
periods  of  great  upheaval  and  deformation  in  the 
earth's  crust  appear  to  be  separated  by  millions  of 
years.  Away  back  in  pre-Cambrian  times,  there 
appear  to  have  been  immense  periods  during  which 
the  peace  and  repose  of  the  globe  were  as  profound 
as  in  our  own  time.  Then  at  the  end  of  Palaeozoic 
time  —  how  many  millions  of  years  is  only  con- 
jectural— the  truce  of  seons  was  broken,  and  the 
dogs  of  war  let  loose;  it  was  a  period  of  revolution 
which  resulted  in  the  making  of  one  of  our  greatest 
mountain-systems,  the  Appalachian,  and  in  an  un- 
precedented extinction  of  species.  Later  eras  have 
witnessed  similar  revolutions.  Why  may  they  not 
come  again?  The  shrinking  of  the  cooling  globe 
must  still  go  on,  and  this  shrinking  must  give  rise  to 
surface  disturbances  and  dislocations,  maybe  in  the 
uplift  of  new  mountain-ranges  from  the  sea-bot- 

115 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

torn,  now  undreamed  of,  and  in  volcanic  eruptions 
as  great  as  any  in  the  past.  Such  a  shrinkage  and 
eruption  made  the  Hawaiian  Islands,  probably  in 
Tertiary  times;  such  a  shrinkage  may  make  other 
islands  and  other  continents  before  another  period 
of  equal  time  has  elapsed. 

Of  course  the  periods  and  eras  into  which  the 
geologists  divide  geologic  time  are  as  arbitrary  as 
the  months  and  seasons  into  which  we  divide  our 
year,  and  they  fade  out  into  each  other  in  much  the 
same  way;  but  they  are  really  as  marked  as  our 
seasonal  divisions.  Not  in  their  climates  —  for  the 
climate  of  the  globe  seems  to  have  been  uniformly 
warm  from  pole  to  pole,  without  climatic  zones, 
throughout  the  vast  stretch  of  Palaeozoic  and  Mes- 
ozoic  times  —  but  in  the  succession  of  animal  and 
vegetable  life  which  they  show.  The  rocks  are  the 
cemeteries  of  the  different  forms  of  life  that  have 
appeared  upon  the  globe,  and  here  the  geologist 
reads  their  succession  in  time,  and  assigns  them  to 
his  geologic  horizons  accordingly.  The  same  or  allied 
forms  appeared  upon  all  parts  of  the  earth  at  ap- 
proximately the  same  time,  so  that  he  can  trace  his 
different  formations  around  the  world  by  the  fossils 
they  hold.  Each  period  had  its  dominant  forms. 
The  Silurian  was  the  great  age  of  trilobites;  the 
Devonian,  the  age  of  fishes;  Mesozoic  times  swarm 
with  the  gigantic  reptiles;  and  in  Tertiary  times 
the  mammals  are  dominant.    Each  period  and  era 

116 


THROUGH  THE   GEOLOGIST'S  EYES 

has  its  root  in  that  which  preceded  it.  There  were 
rude,  half -defined  fishes  in  the  Silurian,  and  probably 
the  beginning  of  amphibians  in  the  Devonian,  and 
some  small  mammalian  forms  in  the  Mesozoic  time, 
and  doubtless  rude  studies  of  the  genus  Homo  in 
Tertiary  times.  Nature  works  up  her  higher  forms 
like  a  human  inventor  from  rude  beginnings.  Her 
first  models  barely  suggest  her  later  achievements. 

In  the  vegetable  world  it  has  been  the  same;  from 
the  first  simple  algse  in  the  Cambrian  seas  up  to  the 
forests  of  our  own  times,  the  gradation  is  easily 
traced.   Step  by  step  has  vegetable  life  mounted. 

The  great  majority  of  the  plants  and  animals  of 
one  period  fail  to  pass  over  into  the  next,  just  as  our 
spring  flowers  fail  to  pass  over  into  summer,  and 
our  summer  flowers  into  fall.  But  the  law  of  evolu- 
tion is  at  work,  and  life  always  rises  on  stepping- 
stones  of  its  dead  self  to  higher  things. 


HOLIDAYS  IN  HAWAII 

ON  the  edge  of  the  world  my  islands  lie,"  sings 
Mrs.  Frear  in  her  little  lyric  on  the  Hawaiian 
Islands. 

"  On  the  edge  of  the  world  my  islands  lie. 
Under  the  sun-steeped  sky; 
And  their  waving  palms 
Are  bounteous  alms 
To  the  soul-spent  passer-by. 

"  On  the  edge  of  the  world  my  islands  sleep 
In  a  slumber  soft  and  deep.  , 

What  should  they  know 
Of  a  world  of  woe, 
And  myriad  men  that  weep  ?  " 

On  the  rim  of  the  world  my  fancy  seemed  to  see 
them  that  May  day  when  we  went  aboard  the  huge 
Pacific  steamship  in  San  Francisco  Harbor,  and  she 
pointed  her  prow  westward  toward  the  vast  wilder- 
ness of  the  Pacific  —  on  the  edge  of  the  world, 
looking  out  and  down  across  the  vast  water  toward 
Asia  and  Australia.  I  wondered  if  the  great  iron 
ship  could  find  them,  and  if  we  should  realize  or 
visualize  the  geography  or  the  astronomy  when  we 
got  there,  and  see  ourselves  on  the  huge  rotundity 
of  the  globe  not  far  above  her  equatorial  girdle. 

Yes,  on  the  rim  of  the  world  they  lie  to  the  trav- 
eler steaming  toward  them,  and  on  the  rim  of  the 

119 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

world  they  lie  in  his  memory  after  his  return,  bask- 
ing there  in  that  tropical  sunlight,  forever  fanned  by 
those  cooling  trade  winds,  and  encompassed  by  that 
morning-glory  sea.  With  my  mind's  eye  I  behold 
them  rising  from  that  enormous  abyss  of  the  Pa- 
cific, fire-born  and  rain-carved,  vast  volcanic  moun- 
tains miles  deep  under  the  sea,  and  in  some  cases 
miles  high  above  it,  clothed  with  verdure  and  teem- 
ing with  life,  the  scene  of  long-gone  cosmic  strife 
and  destruction,  now  the  abode  of  rural  and  civic 
peace  and  plenty. 

The  Pacific  treated  me  so  much  better  than  the 
Atlantic  ever  had  that  I  am  probably  inclined  to 
overestimate  everything  I  saw  on  the  voj^age.  It 
was  the  first  trip  at  sea  that  ever  gave  me  any  pleas- 
ure. The  huge  vessels  are  in  themselves  a  great 
comfort,  and  in  the  placid  waters  and  the  sliding 
down  the  rotund  side  of  the  great  globe  under 
warmer  and  warmer  skies  one  gains  a  very  agree- 
able experience.  The  first  day's  run  must  have  car- 
ried us  out  and  over  that  huge  Pacific  abyss,  the 
Tuscarora  Deep,  where  there  were  nearly  four  miles 
of  water  under  us.  Some  of  our  aeroplanes  have 
gone  up  half  that  distance  and  disappeared  from 
sight.  I  fancy  that  our  ship,  more  than  six  hundred 
feet  long,  would  have  appeared  a  very  small  object, 
floating  across  this  briny  firmament,  could  one  have 
looked  up  at  it  from  the  bottom  of  that  sea. 

The  Hawaiian  Islands  rise  from  the  border  of  that 

120 


HOLIDAYS  IN  HAWAII 

vast  deep,  and  one  can  fancy  how  that  huge  pot  must 
have  boiled  back  in  Tertiary  times,  when  the  red-hot 
lava  of  which  they  are  mainly  built  up  was  poured 
from  the  interior  of  the  globe. 

Softer  and  more  balmy  grew  the  air  every  day, 
more  and  more  placid  and  richly  tinted  grew  the 
sea,  till,  on  the  morning  of  the  sixth  day,  we  saw 
ahead  of  us,  low  on  the  horizon,  the  dim  outlines 
of  the  mountains  of  Molokai.  The  island  of  Oahu, 
upon  which  Honolulu  is  situated,  was  soon  in  sight. 
It  was  not  long  before  we  saw  Diamond  Head,  a  vast 
crater  bowl,  eight  hundred  feet  high  on  its  ocean 
side,  and  half  a  mile  across,  sitting  there  upon  the 
shore  like  some  huge,  strange  work  of  man's  hand, 
running  back  through  the  hills  with  a  level  rim,  and 
seaward  with  a  sloping  base,  brown  and  ribbed,  and 
in  every  way  unique  and  striking. 

We  were  approaching  a  land  the  child  of  tropic 
seas  and  volcanic  lava,  and  many  of  the  features  were 
new  and  strange  to  us.  The  mountains  looked  fa- 
miliar in  outline,  but  the  colors  of  the  landscape,  the 
soft  lilacs,  greens,  and  browns,  and  the  whole  atmo- 
sphere of  the  scene,  were  unlike  anything  we  had 
ever  before  seen.  And  Diamond  Head,  what  a  fea- 
ture it  was!  Had  it  only  had  a  head,  one  could 
easily  have  seen  in  it  a  suggestion  of  a  couchant 
lion,  bony,  huge,  and  taw^ny,  looking  seaward,  and 
guarding  the  harbor  of  Honolulu  which  lies  just 
behind  it.    Into  this  harbor,  in  the  soft  morning  air, 

121 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

our  ship  soon  found  its  way,  and  the  monotony  of 
the  vast,  unpeopled  sea  was  quickly  succeeded  by 
human  scenes  of  the  most  varied  and  animated 
character,  not  the  least  novel  of  which  were  the 
swarms  of  half-amphibious  native  boys  who  sur- 
rounded the  vessel  as  she  lay  at  the  wharf,  and 
with  brown,  upturned  faces  and  beckoning  hands 
tempted  the  passengers  to  toss  dimes  into  the 
water.  As  the  coins  struck  the  surface  they  would 
dive  with  the  ease  and  quickness  of  seals,  and  seize 
the  silver  apparently  before  it  had  gone  a  yard 
toward  the  bottom.  Holding  the  coins  up  to  view 
between  the  thumb  and  finger,  they  would  slip 
them  into  their  mouths  and  solicit  more. 

On  shore  we  were  greeted  with  the  music  of  the 
Royal  Hawaiian  Band,  and  a  motley  crowd  of 
Hawaiians,  Japanese,  Chinese,  Portuguese,  and 
Americans,  bearing  colored  Zm,  or  wreaths  of 
flowers,  which  they  waved  at  friends  on  board,  and 
with  which  they  bedecked  them  as  soon  as  they 
came  off  the  gangplank.  It  was  a  Babel  of  tongues 
in  which  the  strange,  vowel-choked  language  of  the 
Hawaiians  was  conspicuous. 

Honolulu  is  a  beautiful  cit3^  clean,  bright,  well 
ordered,  and  well  appointed,  —  electric  lights,  good 
streets,  electric  cars,  fine  hotels  and  clubs,  excel- 
lent fire  protection,  mountain  water,  libraries,  parks, 
handsome  buildings,  attractive  homes,  —  in  fact,  all 
that  we  boast  of  in  our  home  cities.    Embosomed  in 

122 


HOLIDAYS   IN  HAWAII 

palms,  with  mangoes,  and  other  tropical  trees,  with 
a  profusion  of  gorgeously  colored  vines  and  hedges, 
with  spacious,  well-kept  grounds  about  the  large 
and  comfortable  houses  in  the  residential  portion 
—  these  features,  with  the  ready  hospitality  of  the 
people,  made  our  hearts  warm  towards  it  at  once. 

Volcanic  heights  on  all  the  land  side  look  down 
upon  the  city.  Mount  Tantalus,  rising  four  thousand 
feet  above  the  sea,  is  just  back  of  it,  with  its  long 
slopes  of  volcanic  ash  and  sand  now  clothed  by  for- 
ests and  fertile  fields,  and  a  huge  ancient  crater 
called  the  Punch  Bowl,  born  probably  on  the  self- 
same day,  the  geologists  think,  as  Diamond  Head, 
dominates  the  city  in  the  immediate  foreground. 
If  the  Punch  Bowl  were  again  to  overflow  with  the 
fiery  liquid,  the  city  would  soon  go  up  in  smoke. 
But  its  bowl-like  interior  is  now  covered  with  grass 
and  trees,  and  presents  a  scene  of  the  most  peaceful, 
rural  character. 

The  Orient  and  the  Occident  meet  in  Honolulu. 
There  Asia  and  America  join  hands.  The  main 
features  of  the  city  are  decidedly  American,  but  the 
people  seen  upon  the  street  and  at  work  indoors  and 
out  are  more  than  half  Oriental.  The  native  popu- 
lation cuts  only  a  small  figure.  The  real  workers  — 
carpenters,  masons,  field  hands,  and  house  ser- 
vants —  are  mostly  Japanese.  Virtually  all  the 
work  of  the  immense  sugar  plantations  is  done  by 
the  little  brown  men  and  women,  while  China  sup^ 

123 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

plies  some  of  the  merchants  in  the  city  and  the  sail- 
ors and  stewards  on  the  ocean  steamers.  What 
admirable  servants  the  Chinese  make,  so  respectful, 
so  prompt,  so  silent,  so  quick  to  comprehend !  The 
Japanese  house  servants  on  the  islands  also  give 
efficient  and  gracious  service. 

I  had  gone  to  Honolulu  reluctantly,  but  tarried 
there  joyfully.  The  fine  climate,  with  its  even 
temperature  of  about  eighty  degrees  Fahrenheit, 
and  with  all  that  is  enervating  or  oppressive  in  that 
degree  of  heat  winnowed  out  of  it  by  the  ceaseless 
trade  winds;  the  almost  unbroken  sunshine,  per- 
fumed now  and  then  by  a  sprinkle  of  sunlit  rain 
from  the  mountains;  the  wonderful  sea  laving  the 
shores  on  the  one  hand  and  the  cool,  cloud-capped, 
and  rain-drenched  heights  within  easy  reach  on  the 
other;  the  green,  cozy  valleys;  the  broad  sweep  of 
plain;  the  new,  strange  nature  on  every  side;  the 
novel  and  delicious  fruits;  the  pepsin-charged 
papaya,  or  tree  melon,  which  tickles  the  palate  while 
it  heals  and  renews  the  whole  digestive  system; 
the  mangoes  (oh,  the  mangoes!);  the  cordiality  of 
the  people;  the  inviting  bungalows;  the  clean 
streets;  the  good  service  everywhere  —  all  made 
me  feel  how  mistaken  was  my  reluctance. 

Most  of  the  Americans  one  meets  there  are  de- 
scendants of  the  missionaries  who  went  out  from 
New  England  and  New  York  early  in  the  last  cen- 
tur3%  and  one  feels  at  home  with  them  at  once. 


HOLIDAYS  IN  HAWAII 

Many  of  the  residents  there  have  been  educated  in 
the  States.  The  Governor,  Mr.  Frear,  is  a  gradu- 
ate of  Yale;  his  wife  is  a  graduate  of  Wellesley.  One 
day  a  charming  Southern  woman,  president  of  the 
College  Club,  invited  us  to  meet  the  college  women 
of  the  city.  The  gathering  took  place  under  the  trees 
upon  the  lawn  of  one  of  the  older  homesteads. 
There  were  forty  college  women  present,  many  of 
them  teachers,  from  Vassar,  Wellesley,  Smith,  Brs'n 
Mawr,  and  Barnard.  Among  them  were  two  girls 
who  had  visited  me  at  my  cabin,  *'Slabsides,'* 
while  they  were  at  Vassar. 

Wide  as  is  the  world,  the  traveler  is  pretty  sure 
to  strike  threads  of  relation  with  his  home  country 
wherever  he  goes.  I  made  the  acquaintance  in 
Honolulu  of  a  man  from  my  own  county;  another, 
who  showed  us  great  kindness,  was  from  an  adjoin- 
ing county;  while  one  day  upon  the  street  I  was 
called  by  name  by  a  man  whom  I  had  known  as  a 
boy  in  the  town  where  I  now  live. 

One  Saturday  a  walking-club,  largely  made  up  of 
men  and  women  teachers,  whose  native  Hawaiian 
name  meant  "Walkers  in  Unfrequented  Places," 
asked  us  to  join  them  in  a  walk  up  Palola  Valley  to 
the  site  of  an  extinct  crater  well  up  in  the  moun- 
tains. These  walkers  in  unfrequented  places  proved 
to  be  real  walkers,  and  gave  us  all  and  more  than  we 
had  bargained  for  —  more  mud  and  wet  and  slip- 
pery trails  through  clinging  vines  and  rank  lantana 

125 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

scrub  than  was  good  for  our  shoes  and  garments  or 
for  the  bodies  inside  them.  It  was  a  long  pull  of 
many  miles,  at  first  up  the  valley  over  a  fair  high- 
way, then  into  the  woods  on  the  mountain-side 
along  a  trail  that  was  muddy  and  slippery  from  the 
recent  showers,  and  most  of  the  time  was  buried 
out  of  sight  beneath  the  high,  coarse  stag-horn  fern 
and  a  thick  growth  of  lantana  that  met  above  it  as 
high  as  our  shoulders.  A  more  discouraging  moun- 
tain climb  I  never  undertook.  The  vegetation  was  all 
novel,  but  it  had  that  barbaric  rankness  of  all  tropi- 
cal woods,  with  nothing  of  the  sylvan  sweetness  and 
simplicity  of  our  home  woods.  There  were  no  fine, 
towering  trees,  but  low,  gnarled,  and  tortuous  ones, 
which,  with  their  hanging  vines,  like  the  broken 
ropes  of  a  ship's  rigging,  and  their  parasitic  growths, 
presented  a  riotous,  disheveled  appearance. 

Nature  in  the  tropics,  left  to  herself,  is  harsh, 
aggressive,  savage;  looks  as  though  she  wanted  to 
hang  you  with  her  dangling  ropes,  or  impale  you 
on  her  thorns,  or  engulf  you  in  her  ranks  of  gigantic 
ferns.  Her  mood  is  never  as  placid  and  sane  as  in 
the  North.  There  is  a  tree  in  the  Hawaiian  woods 
that  suggests  a  tree  gone  mad.  It  is  called  the 
hau-tree.  It  lies  down,  squirms,  and  wriggles  all 
over  the  ground  like  a  wounded  snake;  it  gets  up, 
and  then  takes  to  earth  again.  Now  it  wants  to  be 
a  vine,  now  it  wants  to  be  a  tree.  It  throws  somer- 
saults, it  makes  itself  into  loops  and  rings,  it  rolls, 

126 


HOLIDAYS  IN  HAWAII 

it  reaches,  it  doubles  upon  itself.  Altogether  it  is 
the  craziest  vegetable  growth  I  ever  saw.  Where 
you  can  get  it  up  off  the  ground  and  let  it  perform 
its  antics  on  a  broad  skeleton  framework,  it  makes 
a  cover  that  no  sunbeam  can  penetrate,  and  forms 
a  living  roof  to  the  most  charming  verandas  —  or 
lanais,  as  they  are  called  in  the  islands  —  that  one 
can  wish  to  see. 

But  I  saw  and  heard  one  thing  on  this  walk  that 
struck  a  different  note:  it  was  one  of  the  native 
birds,  the  Oahu  thrush.  The  moment  I  heard  it  I 
was  reminded  of  our  brown  thrasher,  though  the 
song,  or  whistle,  was  much  finer  and  richer  in  tone 
than  that  of  our  bird.  The  glimpse  I  got  of  the  bird 
showed  it  to  be  of  about  the  size  and  shape  of  our 
thrasher,  but  much  brighter  in  color.  It  seems  as 
though  the  two  species  must  have  had  a  common 
origin  some  time,  somewhere.  I  was  attracted  by 
no  other  native  bird  on  this  walk.  In  the  valley  be- 
low we  had  seen  and  heard  the  Chinese  workmen 
going  about  their  rice-fields  making  strange  sounds 
to  drive  away  the  rice-birds,  a  small,  brown  species 
that  has  been  introduced  from  India. 

When  we  reached  the  mountain-top,  we  found 
it  enveloped  in  fog  and  mist,  and  the  scene  was  cold 
and  cheerless.  We  looked  down  through  a  screen  of 
foliage  into  a  deep  valley  that  seemed  almost  be- 
neath us,  and  which  is  supposed  to  have  been  an 
ancient  crater.  There,  on  the  brink,  the  walkers  had 

1^27 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

a  rude  cabin,  where  we  ate  our  lunch  beside  a  fire 
and  tried  to  dry  our  bedraggled  garments. 

From  this  point  some  of  the  party  continued  their 
walk,  looking  for  more  unfrequented  places,  but 
some  of  us  had  longings  the  other  way,  and  retraced 
our  steps  toward  the  sunlight  and  the  drier  winds 
we  had  left.  We  reached  town  footsore  and  be- 
draggled, and  the  little  Japanese  who  cleaned  and 
pressed  my  suit  of  clothes,  and  made  them  look  as 
good  as  new  for  seventy -five  cents,  well  earned  his 
money. 

The  walk  of  eight  or  ten  miles  which  we  took  two 
weeks  later  with  Governor  Frear  and  his  wife,  up  the 
new  Castle  trail  to  the  mountain-top  behind  Tan- 
talus, had  some  features  in  common  with  the  first 
walk,  —  the  increasing  mist  and  coolness  as  we 
entered  the  mountains,  the  dripping  bushes,  and  the 
slippery  paths,  —  but  we  got  finer  views,  and  found 
a  better-kept  trail.  Our  walk  ended  on  the  top  of 
a  narrow  ridge  of  the  mountain,  where  we  ate  our 
lunch  in  a  cold,  driving  mist  and  were  a  bit  uncom- 
fortable. I  was  interested  in  the  character  of  the 
ridge  upon  which  we  sat.  It  was  not  more  than  six 
feet  wide,  a  screen  of  volcanic  rock  worn  almost  to 
an  edge,  and  separated  two  valleys  six  or  seven  hun- 
dred feet  deep.  The  Governor  said  he  could  take  me 
where  the  dividing  ridge  between  the  two  valleys 
was  so  narrow  that  one  could  literally  sit  astride  of 
it,  so  that  one  leg  would  point  to  one  valley  and  the 

128 


HOLIDAYS   IN   HAWAII 

other  to  the  other.  This  is  a  feature  of  a  new  coun- 
try geologically;  the  rains  and  other  agents  of  ero- 
sion have  whittled  the  mountains  to  sharp  edges, 
but  have  not  yet  rounded  or  leveled  them. 

The  northeast  trade  winds  which  blow  upon  these 
islands  nine  months  in  the  year  bring  a  burden  of 
moisture  from  the  Pacific  which  is  condensed  into 
rain  and  mist  by  the  mountains,  and  which,  with 
the  rank  vegetation  that  it  fosters,  carves  them  and 
sharpens  them  like  a  great  grindstone  revolving 
against  their  sides.  At  a  place  called  the  Pali  — 
and  at  the  Needles,  on  the  island  of  Maui  —  it  has 
worn  through  the  mountain-chain  and  made  deep 
and  very  picturesque  gorges  where,  in  the  case  of 
the  Pali,  the  wind  is  so  strong  and  steady  that  you 
can  almost  lie  down  upon  it. 

It  was  near  the  Pali  that  I  saw  what  I  had  never 
seen  or  heard  of  before  —  a  waterfall  reversed,  go- 
ing up  instead  of  down.  It  suggested  Stockton's 
story  of  negative  gravity.  A  small  brook  comes 
down  off  the  mountain  and  attempts  to  make  the 
leap  down  a  high  precipice;  but  the  winds  catch  it 
and  carry  it  straight  up  in  the  air  like  smoke.  It  is 
translated;  it  becomes  a  mere  wraith  hovering  above 
the  beetling  crag.  Night  and  day  this  goes  on,  the 
wind  snatching  from  the  mountains  in  this  sum- 
mary way  the  water  it  has  brought  them. 

On  the  walk  with  the  Governor  we  made  the  ac- 
quaintance of  some  of  the  land  shells  for  which  these 

1^29 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

islands  are  famous  —  pretty,  pearl-like  little  whorls 
living  on  the  largest  trees,  and  about  the  size  of  a 
chipping  sparrow's  egg,  with  pointed  ends,  variously 
colored.  There  are  more  than  two  hundred  species 
on  the  different  islands,  I  think,  each  valley  having 
varieties  peculiar  to  itself,  showing  what  a  factor 
isolation  is  in  the  evolution  of  new  species.  The 
Governor  and  his  wife,  and  a  young  man  who  had 
specialized  in  conchology,  plucked  them  from  nearly 
every  bush  and  tree;  but  my  eye,  being  untrained 
in  this  kind  of  work,  was  very  slow  in  finding 
them. 

Coming  down  from  these  Hawaiian  mountains 
is  like  coming  out  of  a  dripping  tent  of  clouds  into 
the  clear,  warm  sunshine.  The  change  is  most  de- 
lightful. Your  clothing  dries  very  quickly,  and  chil- 
liness gives  place  to  genial  warmth.  And  the  pro- 
spects that  open  before  you,  the  glimpses  down 
into  these  deep,  yellow-green,  crater-like  valleys, 
checkered  with  neat  little  Chinese  farms,  the  pano- 
rama of  the  city  and  the  sea  unrolling  as  you  come 
down,  and  always  Diamond  Head  standing  guard 
there  to  the  east  —  how  the  vision  of  it  all  lingers 
in  the  memory! 

In  climbing  the  heights,  it  was  always  a  surprise 
to  me  to  see  the  Pacific  rise  up  as  I  rose,  till  it  stood 
up  like  a  great  blue  wall  there  against  the  horizon. 
A  level  plain  unrolls  in  the  same  way  as  we  mount 
above  it,  but  it  does  not  produce  the  same  illusion 

130 


HOLIDAYS  IN  HAWAII 

of  rising  up  like  a  wall  or  a  mountain-range  ;   the 
blue,  facile  water  cheats  the  eye. 

One  of  the  novel  pleasures  in  which  most  travelers 
indulge  while  in  Honolulu  is  surf-riding  at  Waikiki, 
near  Diamond  Head.  The  sea,  with  a  floor  of  lava 
and  coral,  is  here  shallow  for  a  long  distance  out, 
and  the  surf  comes  in  at  intervals  like  a  line  of 
steeds  cantering  over  a  plain.  We  went  out  in  our 
bathing-suits  in  a  long,  heavy  dugout,  with  a  lusty 
native  oarsman  in  each  end.  When  several  hundred 
yards  from  shore,  we  saw,  on  looking  seaward,  the 
long,  shining  billows  coming,  whereupon  our  oars- 
men headed  the  canoe  toward  shore,  and  plied  their 
paddles  with  utmost  vigor,  uttering  simultaneously 
a  curious,  excited  cry.  In  a  moment  the  breaker 
caught  us  and,  in  some  way  holding  us  on  its  crest, 
shot  us  toward  the  shore  like  an  arrow.  The  sensa- 
tion is  novel  and  thrilling.  The  foam  flies;  the 
waters  leap  about  you.  You  are  coasting  on  the  sea, 
and  you  shout  with  delight  and  pray  for  the  sensation 
to  continue.  But  it  is  quickly  over.  The  hurrying 
breaker  slips  from  under  you,  and  leaves  you  in  the 
trough,  while  it  goes  foaming  on  the  shore.  Then 
you  turn  about  and  row  out  from  the  shore  again, 
and  wait  for  another  chance  to  be  shot  toward  the 
land  on  the  foaming  crest  of  a  great  Pacific  wave. 

I  suppose  the  trick  is  in  the  skill  of  the  oarsmen 
in  holding  the  boat  on  the  pitch  of  the  billow  so 
that  in  its  rush  it  takes  you  with  it.    The  native 

131 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

boys  do  the  feat  standing  on  a  plank.  I  was  tempted 
to  try  this  myself,  but  of  course  made  a  comical 
failure. 

One  of  my  pleasant  surprises  in  Honolulu  —  one 
that  gave  the  touch  of  nature  which  made  me  feel 
less  a  stranger  there  —  was  learning  that  the  Euro- 
pean sk^dark  had  been  introduced  and  was  thriving 
on  the  grassy  slopes  back  of  the  city.  The  mina,  a 
species  of  starling  from  India  as  large  as  our  robin 
and  rather  showily  dressed,  with  a  loud,  strident 
voice,  I  had  seen  and  heard  evervwhere  both  in 
town  and  country,  but  he  was  a  stranger  and  did 
not  appeal  to  me.  But  the  thought  of  the  skylark 
brought  Shelley  and  Wordsworth,  and  English 
downs  and  meadows,  near  to  me  at  once,  and  I  was 
eager  to  hear  it.  So  early  one  morning  we  left  the 
Pleasanton,  our  tarry ing-place,  and  climbed  the 
long,  pastoral  slope  above  the  city,  where  cattle  and 
horses  were  grazing,  and  listened  for  this  minstrel 
from  the  motherland.  We  had  not  long  to  wait. 
Sure  enough,  not  far  from  us  there  sprang  from  the 
turf  Shelley's  bird,  and  went  climbing  his  invisible 
spiral  toward  the  sky,  pouring  out  those  hurried, 
ecstatic  notes,  just  as  I  had  heard  him  above  the 
South  Downs  of  England.  It  was  a  moment  of  keen 
delight  to  me.  The  bird  soared  and  hovered,  drift- 
ing about,  as  it  were,  before  the  impetuous  current 
of  his  song,  with  all  the  joy  and  abandon  with  which 
the  poets  have  credited  him.  It  was  like  a  bit  of 

132 


HOLIDAYS  IN  HAWAII 

English  literature  vocal  in  the  air  there  above  these 
alien  scenes.  Presently  another  went  up,  and  tlieu 
another,  and  still  another,  the  singers  behaving 
in  everj^  respect  as  they  do  by  the  Avon  and  the 
Tweed,  and  for  a  moment  I  seemed  to  be  breathing 
the  air  that  Wordsworth  and  Shellev  breathed. 

If  our  excursion  had  taken  us  only  to  the  island 
of  Oahu  and  its  beautiful  city,  it  would  have  been 
eminently  worth  while,  but  the  last  week  in  May  we 
took  what  is  called  the  inter-island  trip,  a  six  days* 
voyage  among  the  various  islands,  when  we  visited 
the  great  extinct  crater  of  Haleakala  on  Maui,  and 
the  active  volcano  Kilauea  on  Hawaii.  It  is  a  voy- 
age over  several  rough  channels  in  a  small  steamer, 
and  my  friends  said,  **If  you  have  not  yet  paid 
tribute  to  Neptune,  you  will  pay  it  now."  But  I  did 
not.  My  companions  were  prostrated,  but  I  see 
Neptune  respects  age,  and  my  slumbers  were  undis- 
turbed. A  wireless  message  had  gone  to  Mr.  Aiken, 
on  the  island  of  Maui,  to  meet  us  with  his  auto- 
mobile in  the  morning  at  the  landing  at  Kahului. 
We  were  taken  to  the  shore  on  a  lighter,  along  with 
the  horses  and  cargo,  and  there  found  our  new 
friend  awaiting  us. 

The  great  mountain  of  Haleakala  rose  up  in  a  long 
line  against  the  sky  on  the  left,  and  the  deeply 
eroded  and  canoned  mountains  of  the  older,  or  west, 
end  of  the  island  on  our  right.  Toward  the  latter  our 
guide  took  us.  It  was  a  pleasant  spin  along  the  good 

133 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

roads,  in  the  fresh  morning  air,  near  the  beach,  to 
Wailuku,  the  shire  town  of  the  island,  two  or  three 
miles  distant.  Here  we  were  most  hospitably  enter- 
tained in  the  home  of  Mr.  Penhallow,  the  director 
of  a  large  sugar  plantation. 

Here  for  the  first  time  in  my  life  I  saw  a  gang  of 
steam  plows  working,  pulled  by  a  stationary  engine 
at  each  end  of  the  field,  and  turning  over  the  red, 
heavy  volcanic  soil.  The  work  was  mainly  in  the 
hands  of  Japanese,  and  was  well  done.  We  after- 
ward saw  Japanese  by  the  score,  both  men  and 
women,  planting  a  large  area  of  newly  plowed 
land  with  sugar-cane. 

x\fter  we  were  rested  and  refreshed,  and  had 
sampled  the  mangoes  that  had  fallen  from  a  tree 
near  the  house,  Mr.  Aiken  took  us  in  his  automobile 
up  into  the  famous  lao  Valley,  at  the  mouth  of 
which  Wailuku  is  situated.  It  is  a  deep,  striking 
chasm  carved  out  of  the  mountain  by  the  stream, 
rank  with  verdure  of  various  kinds,  and  looked 
down  upon  by  sharp  peaks  and  ridges  five  or  six 
thousand  feet  high.  We  soon  reached  the  clear 
rapid,  brawling  stream,  as  bright  as  a  Catskill  moun- 
tain trout  brook,  and  after  a  mile  or  two  along  its 
course  we  came  to  the  end  of  the  road,  where  we  left 
the  machine  and  took  a  trail  that  wound  onward  and 
upward  over  a  slippery  surface  and  through  dripping 
bushes,  for  we  here  began  to  reach  the  skirts  of  the 
little  showers  that  almost  constantly  career  over  and 

134 


HOLIDAYS  IN  HAWAII 

about  the  interior  of  these  mountains.  I  neither  saw 
nor  heard  a  bird  or  other  Hve  thing.  Guava  apples 
lay  on  the  ground  all  along  the  trail,  and  one  could 
eat  them  and  not  make  faces.  Some  of  the  sharp, 
knife-blade  ridges  that  cut  down  toward  us  from  the 
higher  peaks  were  very  startling,  and  so  steep  and 
high  that  they  could  be  successfully  scaled  only  by 
the  aid  of  ropes  and  ladders.  A  more  striking  object- 
lesson  in  erosion  by  rain  would  be  hard  to  find. 
There  were  no  naked  rocks;  short,  thick  vegetation 
covered  even  the  steepest  slopes,  and  the  vegetable 
acids  which  this  generated,  and  the  perpetual  rains, 
weathered  the  mountains  down.  It  soon  became  so 
wet  that  we  stopped  far  short  of  the  head  of  the  val- 
ley, and  turned  back.  I  wished  to  look  into  the 
great,  deep,  green  amphitheatre  which  seems  to  lie 
at  the  head,  but  had  glimpses  of  it  only  from  a  dis- 
tance. How  many  millenniums  will  it  be,  I  said  to 
myself,  before  erosion  will  have  completed  its  work 
here,  and  these  thin,  high  mountain-walls  will  be 
in  ruins?     Surely  not  many. 

We  returned  to  the  hospitable  home  we  had  left, 
and  passed  the  midday  there.  In  the  afternoon  Mr. 
Aiken,  guiding  our  eyes  by  the  forms  of  trees  that 
cut  the  horizon-line  on  the  huge  flank  of  Haleakala, 
pointed  out  the  place  of  his  own  homestead,  twenty 
or  more  miles  away.  From  this  point  the  great 
mountain  appeared  like  a  vast  landscape  tilted  up 
at  an  easy  angle  against  the  horizon.    One  could 

135 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

* 

hardly  believe  it  was  ten  thousand  feet  high.  The 
machine  chmbed  easily  more  than  half  the  distance 
to  Mr.  Aiken's  plantation,  which  we  reached  in  good 
time  in  the  afternoon,  and  where  we  passed  a  very 
enjoyable  night.  It  was  a  surprise  to  find  swarms 
of  mosquitoes  at  this  altitude,  so  free  from  all 
mosquito-breeding  waters.  But  the  house  was  well 
protected  against  them.  Mosquitoes,  as  well  as  flies 
and  vermin,  are  not  native  to  the  island.  They 
came  in  ships  not  very  long  ago,  and  are  now  very 
troublesome  in  certain  parts.  They  came  round 
the  Horn.  Mr.  Aiken's  house  itself  came  round 
the  Horn  seventy  or  eighty  years  ago.  It  is  a 
quaint,  New  England  type  of  house,  and  has  a  very 
homelike  look.  In  front  of  it,  near  the  gate,  stands 
a  Japanese  pine  which  is  an  object  of  veneration  to 
all  Japanese  who  chance  to  come  that  way.  Often 
their  eyes  fill  with  tears  on  beholding  it,  so  respon- 
sive are  the  little  yellow  men  to  associations  of 
home. 

In  the  morning  IMr.  Aiken  drove  us  in  a  wagon  to 
a  place  he  has  called  "Idlewild,"  six  miles  farther 
up  the  great  slope  of  the  mountain.  This  slope  of 
Haleakala  is  like  a  whole  township,  diversified  with 
farms  and  woods,  valleys  and  hills,  resting  on  its 
elbows,  so  to  speak,  and  looking  out  over  the  Pacific. 
We  could  look  up  to  the  cloud-line,  about  seven 
thousand  feet  above  the  sea,  and  occasionally  get  a 
glimpse  of  the  long  line  of  the  summit  through  rifts 

136 


HOLIDAYS  IN   HAWAII 

in  the  clouds.  At  Idlewild  our  expedition,  consist- 
ing of  six  mules  and  four  people,  was  fitted  out,  and 
in  the  early  afternoon  we  started  on  the  trail  up  tlie 
mountain. 

For  several  miles  our  way  led  over  grassy  slopes 
where  cattle  were  grazing,  and  above  which  sky- 
larks were  singing.  This  w^as  one  of  the  happy  sur- 
prises of  the  trip  —  the  soaring  and  singing  sky- 
larks. All  the  way  till  we  reached  the  cloud-belt, 
we  had  the  larks  pouring  down  their  music  from  the 
sky  above  us.  They  seemed  specially  jubilant.  It 
was  May  in  England,  too,  and  they  sang  as  though 
the  spirit  of  those  downs  and  fells  was  stirring  in 
their  hearts,  under  alien  skies,  but  true  to  the  mem- 
ories of  home. 

Before  we  reached  the  summit  we  came  upon  an- 
other introduction  from  overseas  —  the  English 
pheasant.  One  started  up  from  some  bushes  only  a 
few  yards  from  the  trail,  went  booming  away,  and 
disappeared  in  a  deep  gully.  A  little  later  another 
sprang  up,  uttering  a  cackling  cry  as  it  flew  away. 
We  saw  three  altogether.  The  only  home  thing  we 
saw  was  white  clover  in  patches  here  and  there,  and 
it  gave  a  most  welcome  touch  to  the  unfamiliar 
scenes. 

The  cattle  we  passed  on  the  way  were  suffering 
dreadfully  from  another  introduction  from  the  States 
—  the  Texas  horn-fly,  w^hich  had  recently  made  its 
appearance.     The  poor   beasts  were   driven   half- 

137 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

crazy  by  it,  as  their  sunken  eyes  and  poor  condition 
plainly  showed. 

The  trail  became  rougher  and  steeper  as  we  as- 
cended, and  the  grass  and  trees  gave  place  to  low, 
scrubby  bushes.  We  were  half  an  hour  or  more  in 
the  cloud-belt,  where  the  singing  skylarks  did  not 
follow  us.  The  clouds  proved  to  be  as  loose  of  tex- 
ture and  as  innocent  as  any  summer  fog  that  loiters 
in  our  valleys;  but  it  was  good  to  emerge  into  the 
sunshine  again,  and  see  the  jagged  line  of  the  top 
sensibly  nearer,  and  the  canopy  of  clouds  unroll 
itself  beneath  us.  Far  ahead  of  us  and  near  the 
summit  we  saw  a  band  of  wild  goats  —  twenty-two, 
I  counted  —  leisurely  grazing  along,  and  now  and 
then  casting  glances  down  upon  us.  They  were 
domestic  animals  gone  wild,  and  still  retained  their 
bizarre  colors  of  white  and  black.  One  big  black 
leader  with  a  long  beard  looked  down  at  us  and 
shook  his  head  threateningly.  We  reached  the  sum- 
mit before  the  sun  reached  the  horizon,  and  our  eyes 
looked  forth  upon  a  strange  world,  indeed.  On 
one  hand  the  vast  sea  of  cloud,  into  which  the  sun 
was  about  to  drop,  rolled  away  from  the  mountain 
below  us,  with  its  white  surface  and  the  irregular 
masses  rising  up  from  it,  suggesting  a  sea  of  float- 
ing ice.  Through  rifts  in  it  we  caught  occasional 
glimpses  of  the  Pacific  —  blue,  vague,  mystical  gulfs 
that  seemed  filled  with  something  less  substantial 
than  water.   On  the  other  hand  was  the  vast  crater 

138 


HOLIDAYS  IN   HAWAII 

of  Haleakala,  two  thousand  feet  deep,  and  many 
miles  across,  in  which  the  shadows  were  deepening, 
and  which  looked  like  some  burned-out  Hades. 

We  stood  or  sat  on  the  jagged  edge  and  saw  the 
day  depart  and  the  night  come  down,  the  glory  of 
cloud  and  sea  and  sunset  on  the  one  hand,  and  on 
the  other  side  the  fearful  chasm  of  the  extinct  vol- 
cano, red  and  black  and  barren,  with  the  hosts  of 
darkness  gathering  in  it.  It  was  like  a  seat  between 
heaven  and  hell.  Then  later,  when  the  Southern 
Cross  came  out  and  rose  above  the  awful  gulf,  the 
scene  was  most  impressive.  4 

'  The  crater  of  Haleakala  is  said  to  be  the  largest 
extinct  crater  in  the  world.  To  follow  all  its  out- 
lines would  lead  one  a  distance  of  more  than  twenty 
miles,  but  it  is  so  irregular  in  shape  that  one  gets 
only  a  poor  conception  of  its  extent  in  a  view  from 
its  brink.  At  its  widest  part  it  cannot  be  more  than 
four  or  five  miles  across.  It  was  evidently  formed 
by  the  whole  top  of  the  mountain  having  been  blown 
out  or  else  sunk  down  in  recent  geologic  times.  The 
fragments  of  jagged  rock  that  thickly  strew  the  sur- 
face all  about  the  summit  look  as  if  they  might  have 
fallen  there.  The  floor  of  the  interior  of  the  crater 
is  thickly  studded  with  many  minor  craters,  through 
which  the  internal  fires  found  vent  after  the  crater 
as  a  whole  had  ceased  to  act.  They  are  of  the  shape  of 
huge  haystacks,  with  a  hole  in  the  top,  and  looked 
soft  and  yielding  in  outline,  and  in  color  as  though 

139 


TIME  AND   CHANGE 

they  were  composed  of  soot  and  brick-dust.  One  of 
them  is  much  larger  than  any  of  the  rest.  I  thought 
it  might  be  two  hundred  feet  high.  *'  It  is  eight  hun- 
dred," said  our  guide;  yet  its  summit  was  more  than 
a  thousand  feet  below  the  rim  upon  which  we  sat. 
There  has  been  no  eruption  in  Haleakala  since 
earlj^  in  the  last  century.  Over  a  large  area  of  the 
interior  the  black  lava,  cracked  and  crumpled,  meets 
the  eye.  Miles  down  one  of  its  great  arms  toward 
the  sea,  we  could  see  the  green  lines  of  vegetation, 
mostly  rank  ferns,  advancing  like  an  invading  army. 
Far  ahead  were  the  skirmishers,  loose  bands  of  ferns, 
with  individual  plants  here  and  there  pushing  on 
over  the  black,  uneven  surface  toward  the  second- 
ary craters  of  the  centre.  Vegetation  was  also 
climbing  down  the  ragged  sides  of  the  crater,  drop- 
ping from  rock  to  rock  like  an  invading  host.  The 
ferns,  those  pioneers  of  the  vegetable  world,  appear 
to  come  first.  Their  giant  progenitors  subdued  the 
rocks  and  made  the  soil  in  Carboniferous  times,  and 
prepared  the  way  for  higher  vegetable  forms,  and 
now  these  striplings  take  up  the  same  task  in  this 
primitive  world  of  the  crater  of  Haleakala,  Their 
task  is  a  long  and  arduous  one,  much  more  so  than 
in  those  parts  of  the  island  where  the  rainfall  is  more 
copious;  but  give  them  time  enough,  and  the  barren 
lava  will  all  be  clothed  with  verdure.  When  decom- 
posed and  ripened  by  time,  it  makes  a  red,  heavy 
soil  that  supports  many  kinds  of  plants  and  trees. 

140 


HOLIDAYS   IN  HAWAII 

The  ferns  come  slowly  marching  in  from  witliout, 
but  in  the  centre  of  the  crater,  on  the  slopes  of  the 
red  cones  and  at  their  bases,  is  another  plant  that 
seems  indigenous,  born  of  the  ash  and  the  scoria  of 
the  volcano,  and  that  apparently  has  no  chlorophyl 
in  its  make-up.  This  is  a  striking  plant,  called  the 
silver  sword,  from  the  shape  and  color  of  its  long, 
narrow  leaves.  They  are  the  color  of  frosted  silver, 
and  are  curved  like  a  sword.  It  is  a  strange  appari- 
tion, white  arid  delicate  and  rare,  springing  up  in 
the  crater  of  a  slumbering  volcano.  A  more  striking 
contrast  with  the  atmosphere  of  the  surroundings 
would  be  hard  to  find  —  a  suggestion  of  peace  and 
purity  above  the  graves  of  world-destroying  forces, 
an  angel  of  light  nourished  by  the  ashes  of  the  de- 
mons of  death  and  darkness. 

It  is  claimed  by  the  people  of  the  island  that  this 
plant  is  found  in  no  other  place  on  the  globe,  but 
this  can  hardly  be  possible.  If  its  evolution  took 
place  in  one  crater,  it  would  take  place  in  another. 
It  consists  of  a  great  mass  of  silvery -white,  bristling 
leaves  resting  upon  the  ground,  from  which  rises  a 
stalk,  strung  with  flowers,  to  the  height  of  five  or 
six  feet.  It  is  evidently  of  the  Yucca  type  of  plant, 
and  has  met  with  a  singular  transformation  in  the 
sleeping  volcano's  mouth,  all  its  harsh  and  savage 
character  turned  into  gentleness  and  grace,  its 
armament  of  needles  and  daggers  giving  place  to  a 
soft,  silvery  down.   We  did  not  see  the  plant  grow- 

141 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

ing  except  at  a  great  distance,  through  field-glasses, 
but  we  saw  a  photograph  of  it  and  a  dried  specimen 
after  we  came  down  from  the  summit. 

It  is  an  all  day's  trip  down  into  the  crater  and 
back,  climbing  over  sliding  sands  and  loose  scoria, 
and  our  time  was  too  limited  to  undertake  it.  We 
passed  the  night  on  the  summit  in  a  rude  stone 
hut,  which  had  a  fireplace  where  the  guide  made 
coffee,  but  we  had  only  the  volcanic  rock  for  floor. 
Upon  this  we  spread  our  ample  supply  of  blankets, 
and  got  such  sleep  as  is  to  be  had  on  high,  cold 
mountain-tops,  where  the  ribs  of  the  mountain 
prove  to  be  so  much  harder  than  one's  own  ribs  — 
not  a  first-class  quality  of  sleep,  but  better  than 
none. 

I  arose  about  two  o'clock,  and  made  my  way  out 
into  the  star-blazing  night.  Such  glory  of  the  hea- 
vens I  had  never  before  seen.  I  had  never  before 
been  lifted  up  so  near  them,  and  hence  had  never 
before  seen  them  through  so  rarefied  an  atmosphere. 
The  clouds  and  vapors  had  disappeared,  and  all  the 
hosts  of  heaven  were  magnified.  The  Milky  Way 
seemed  newly  paved  and  swept.  There  was  no  wind 
and  no  sound.  The  mighty  crater  was  a  gulf  of 
blackness,  but  the  sky  blazed  with  light. 

The  dawn  comes  early  on  such  a  mountain-top, 
and  before  four  o'clock  we  were  out  under  the  fad- 
ing stars.  As  we  had  seen  the  day  pass  into  night, 
surrounded  by  these  wonderful  scenes,  now  we  saw 

142 


HOLIDAYS  IN  HAWAII 

the  night  pass  into  day,  and  the  elemental  grandeur 
on  every  hand  reborn  before  us.  There  was  not  a 
wisp  of  cloud  or  fog  below  us  or  about  us  to  blur  the 
great  picture.  The  sun  came  up  from  behind  the 
vast,  long,  high  wall  of  the  Pacific  that  filled  the 
eastern  horizon,  and  the  shadows  fled  from  the  huge 
pile  of  mountain  in  the  west.  We  hung  about  the 
rim  of  the  great  crater  or  sat  upon  the  jagged  rocks, 
wrapped  in  our  blankets,  till  the  sun  was  an  hour 
high. 

We  got  another  glimpse  of  the  band  of  goats  pick- 
ing their  way  from  ledge  to  ledge  far  below  us  on  the 
side  of  the  crater.  I  saw  and  heard  two  or  three 
mina  birds  fly  past,  apparently  seeking  new  territory 
to  occupy.  These  birds  are  more  enterprising  than 
the  English  sparrows,  which  also  swarm  in  the 
island  towns  but  do  not  brave  the  mountain- 
heights.  The  bird  from  India  seems  at  home  every- 
where. 

After  breakfast  we  still  haunted  for  an  hour  or 
more  the  brink  of  the  great  abyss,  where  one  seemed 
to  feel  the  pulse  of  primal  time,  loath  to  tear  our- 
selves away,  loath  also  to  take  a  last  view  of  the 
panorama  of  land  and  sea,  lit  by  the  morning  sun, 
which  spread  out  far  below  us.  To  the  southeast 
we  could  dimly  see  the  outlines  of  the  island  of 
Hawaii,  with  a  faint  gleam  of  snow  on  its  great 
mountain  Mauna  Loa,  nearly  fourteen  thousand 
feet  high.    In  the  northwest  a  dim,  dark  mass  low 

143 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

in  the  horizon  marked  the  place  of  Oahu.  The 
ocean  rose  in  the  vast  horizon  and  blended  with  the 
sky.  The  eye  could  not  tell  where  one  ended  and  the 
other  began. 

The  mules  had  had  a  comfortable  night  in  a  rude 
stone  stable  against  the  rocks,  and  were  more  eager 
to  hit  the  down  trail  than  were  we.  The  descent 
proved  more  fatiguing  than  the  ascent,  the  con- 
stant plunging  motion  of  the  animals'  shoulders 
being  a  sore  trial.  We  dropped  down  through  the 
belt  of  clouds  that  had  begun  to  form,  and  out  into 
the  grassy  region  of  the  singing  skylarks,  past  herds 
of  grazing  cattle,  and  at  noon  were  again  at  Idle- 
wild,  resting  our  weary  limbs  and  comforting  the 
inner  man. 

In  the  afternoon  Mr.  Aiken  drove  us  back  to  his 
home  farm,  where  we  again  passed  a  very  pleasant 
night.  In  the  morning  I  walked  with  him  through 
his  pineapple  plantation.  It  was  a  new  kind  of  farm- 
ing and  fruit-growing  to  me.  I  forget  now  how 
many  hundred  thousand  plants  his  field  contained. 
They  are  set  and  cultivated  much  as  cabbage  is 
with  us,  but  present  a  strangely  stiff  and  forbidding 
aspect.  The  first  cutting  is  when  the  plants  are 
about  eighteen  months  old,  one  large  solid  apple 
from  each  plant.  The  second  crop  is  called  the 
"raggoon"  crop,  and  yields  two  apples  from  each 
plant,  but  smaller  and  less  valuable  than  the  first. 
The  field  is  then  reset.    I  also  walked  with  Mr. 

144 


HOLIDAYS  IN   HAWAII 

Aiken  over  some  new  land  he  was  getting  ready  for 
pineapples.  It  had  been  densely  covered  with  Ian- 
tana  scrub,  and  clearing  it  and  grubbing  it  out  had 
been  an  heroic  task.  The  lantana  takes  complete 
possession  of  the  soil,  grows  about  four  or  five  feet 
high,  and  makes  a  network  of  roots  in  the  soil  that 
defies  anything  but  a  steam  plow.  The  soil  is  a  red, 
heavy  clay,  and  it  made  the  farmer  in  me  sweat  to 
think  of  the  expenditure  of  labor  necessary  to  turn 
a  lantana  bush  into  a  pineapple  field.  The  redness 
of  this  volcanic  soil  is  said  to  be  owing  to  the  fact 
that  the  growth  of  vegetation  brings  the  iron  into 
new  combinations  with  organic  acids. 

Later  in  the  day  we  visited  the  large  Baldwin 
pineapple-canning  plant,  and  were  shown  the 
whole  process  of  preparing  and  canning  the  fruit, 
and  all  but  surfeited  with  the  most  melting  and  de- 
licious pineapples  it  was  ever  my  good  luck  to  taste. 
The  Hawaiian  pineapple  probably  surpasses  all 
others  in  tenderness  and  lusciousness,  and  it  loses 
scarcely  any  of  these  qualities  in  the  cans.  Ripened 
in  the  field,  where  it  grew  on  the  flanks  of  great 
Haleakala,  and  eaten  out  of  hand,  it  is  a  dream  of 
tropic  lusciousness.  The  canning  is  done  by  an 
elaborate  system  of  machinery  managed  by  Japan- 
ese men  and  women,  the  naked  hand  never  coming  in 
contact  with  the  peeled  fruit,  but  protected  from  it 
by  long,  thin  rubber  gloves.  There  ought  to  be  a 
great  future  for  this  industry,  when  Eastern  con- 

145 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

sumers  really  find  out  the  superior  quality  of  the 
Hawaiian  product. 

From  Mr.  Aiken's  house  one  has  a  view  of  the 
great  wall  of  mountains  that  form  the  western  and 
older  —  older  geologically  —  end  of  the  island, 
in  which  lies  the  famous  lao  Valley,  which  I  have 
already  described.  We  judge,  from  the  much  deeper 
marks  of  rain  erosion,  that  this  end  of  the  island 
is  vastly  older  than  the  butt  end  upon  which  Halea- 
kala  is  situated.  Haleakala  is  eroded  comparatively 
little.  On  all  its  huge  northern  slope  there  is  only  one 
considerable  gash  or  gully,  and  this  is  probably  not 
many  thousand  years  old;  but  the  northwestern  end 
of  the  island  is  worn  and  carved  in  the  most  striking 
manner.  Looking  at  it  that  morning,  I  compared 
it  to  my  extended,  relaxed  hand,  the  northern  end 
being  gashed  and  grooved  like  the  sunken  spaces  be- 
tween the  fingers,  while  the  southwest  end,  not  more 
than  ten  miles  distant,  was  only  slightly  grooved  and 
more  like  the  solid  wrist  and  back  hand.  All  the 
rains  brought  by  the  northeast  trades  fall  upon  the 
northeast  end  of  the  islands.  The  mountain-peaks 
on  the  end  hold  the  clouds  and  strip  them  dry,  so  that 
little  or  no  rain  falls  upon  the  south  and  southwest 
sides.  This  is  true  of  all  the  islands.  One  end  of 
each  is  arid  and  barren,  while  the  other  is  wet  and 
verdant.  One  of  the  smaller  islands,  Kahoolawe,  J 
believe,  dominated  by  Maui  on  the  northeast,  is  said 
to  be  drying  up  and  blowing  away  by  inches. 

146 


HOLIDAYS  IN  HAWAII 

What  a  spell  the  mountains  do  lay  upon  the 
clouds  everywhere,  —  the  robber  mountains,  —  in 
these  islands  exacting  the  last  drop  of  water  of  all 
the  ocean-born  vapors  that  pass  over  them !  On  the 
northeast  side  of  the  Lahaina  district  there  are  val- 
leys four  or  five  thousand  feet  deep ;  on  the  southwest 
side  there  are  no  valleys  worth  mentioning.  The 
difference  in  this  respect  was  forcibly  brought  home 
to  me  when,  later  in  the  day,  we  made  an  automo- 
bile trip  from  Wailuku  to  Lahaina  on  the  south- 
west side;  in  going  less  than  twenty  miles  we  quickly 
passed  from  the  region  of  verdant  valleys  and 
mountain-slopes  into  a  hard,  raw,  barren,  unweath- 
ered  region,  where  there  was  no  soil,  and  where  the 
rocks  looked  as  crude  and  forbidding  as  they  must 
have  looked  the  day  they  flowed  out  from  the 
depths  as  molten  lava.  In  outline  the  island  of 
Maui  suggests  a  truncated  statue,  the  west  end 
representing  the  head,  very  old  and  wrinkled  and 
grooved  by  time  and  trouble,  the  peninsula  the 
well-proportioned  neck,  and  broad-breasted  Halea- 
kala  forming  the  trunk.  What  a  torso  it  is,  fire- 
born  and  basking  there  in  the  tropic  seas! 

The  oldest  island  of  the  Hawaiian  group  is  Kauai, 
called  the  garden  island,  because  it  has  much  the 
deepest  and  most  fertile  soil.  It  shows  much  more 
evidence  of  erosion  than  any  of  the  other  islands. 
The  next  in  point  of  erosion,  and  hence  in  point 
of  age,  is  Oahu,  upon  which  Honolulu  is  situated. 

147 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

Then  come  Molokai  and  Maui,  the  two  ends  of  the 
latter  being  of  vastly  unequal  age.  Hawaii,  the 
largest  of  them  all,  nearly  as  large  as  Connecticut, 
is  the  youngest  of  the  group,  and  shows  the  least 
effects  of  erosion.  When  it  is  as  old  as  Kauai  is  now, 
its  two  huge  mountains,  Mauna  Loa  and  Mauna 
Kea,  will  probably  be  cut  up  into  deep  valleys  and 
canons  and  sharp,  high  ridges,  as  are  the  mountains 
of  Kauai  and  Oahu.  The  lapse  of  time  required  to 
bring  about  such  a  result  is  beyond  all  human  cal- 
culation. Whether  one  million  or  two  millions  of 
years  would  do  it,  who  knows?  Those  warm  tropi- 
cal rains,  aided  by  the  rank  vegetation  which  they 
beget  and  support,  dissolve  the  volcanic  rock  slowly 
but  inevitably. 

Through  the  courtesy  of  Mr.  Lowell,  the  super- 
intendent, we  had  that  day  the  pleasure  of  going 
through  a  large  sugar-making  plant  at  Paia  —  one 
that  turns  out  nearly  fifty  thousand  tons  of  sugar  a 
year.  We  saw  the  cane  come  in  from  the  fields  in  one 
end  of  the  plant,  and  the  dry,  warm  product  being 
put  up  in  bags  at  the  other.  All  the  latest  devices 
and  machinerj^  for  sugar-making  we  saw  here  in  full 
operation,  affording  a  contrast  to  the  crude  and 
wasteful  methods  I  had  seen  in  the  island  of  Jamaica 
a  few  years  before. 

In  the  afternoon  we  availed  ourselves  of  the  five 
or  six  miles  of  narrow-gauge  railway,  the  only  one  on 
the  island,  to  go  from  Paia  to  Wailuku,  where  we 

148 
r>ROPERTY  OF 

K  St  M.  COLLEGE  LIBRARY. 


HOLIDAYS  IN   HAWAII 

were  met  by  another  automobile,  which  hurried  us 
to  Lahaina,  where  we  were  to  meet  the  steamer 
that  was  to  convey  us  to  Hilo,  on  Hawaii.  I  say 
** hurried,"  but  before  the  journey  of  twenty-odd 
miles  was  half  over,  we  realized  the  truth  of  the  old 
adage,  "The  more  haste,  the  less  speed."  The 
automobile  began  to  sulk  and  finally  could  be  per- 
suaded to  go  only  on  the  low  gear,  and  to  rattle 
along  at  about  the  speed  of  a  man  with  a  horse  and 
buggy.  We  reached  Lahaina  just  as  the  boat  was 
entering  the  harbor. 

The  next  morning  we  found  ourselves  steaming 
along  past  the  high,  verdant  shores  of  Hawaii.  For 
fifty  miles  or  more  the  land  presented  one  unbroken 
expanse  of  sugar-cane,  suggesting  fields  of  some 
gigantic  yellow-green  grass.  At  Hilo  the  sun  was 
shining  between  brief  showers,  and  the  air  was  warm 
and  muggy.  It  is  said  to  rain  there  every  day  in  the 
year,  and  the  lush  vegetation  made  the  statement 
seem  credible.  Judge  Andrews  met  us  at  the  steamer, 
and  took  us  to  his  home  for  rest  and  dinner,  and  was 
extremely  kind  to  us. 

In  the  mid-afternoon  we  took  the  train  for 
Glenwood,  thirty  miles  on  our  way  to  the  volcano 
of  Kilauea.  A  large  part  of  the  way  the  road  leads 
through  sugar  plantations,  newly  carved  out  of  the 
koa  and  tree-fern  wilderness  that  originally  covered 
the  volcanic  soil.  Clusters  of  the  little  houses  of  the 
Japanese  laborers,  perched  high  above  the  ground 

149 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

on  slender  posts,  were  passed  here  and  there.  Ev- 
erywhere we  saw  wooden  aqueducts,  or  flumes, 
winding  around  the  contours  of  the  hills  and  across 
the  little  valleys,  often  on  high  trestle-work,  and 
partly  filled  with  clear,  swift-running  water,  in 
which  the  sugar-cane  was  transported  to  the  mills. 

At  Glenwood  stages  meet  the  tourists  and  convey 
them  over  a  fairly  good  road  that  winds  through  the 
tree-fern  forests  to  the  Volcano  House,  ten  miles 
away.  The  beauty  of  that  fern-lined  forest,  the 
long,  stately  plumes  of  the  gigantic  ferns  meeting  the 
eye  everywhere,  I  shall  not  soon  forget.  I  saw  what 
appeared  to  be  a  large,  showy  red  raspberry  grow- 
ing by  the  roadside,  but  I  did  not  find  it  at  all 
tempting  to  the  taste. 

It  was  dark  when  we  reached  the  Volcano  House, 
and  we  saw  off  to  the  left  a  red  glow  upon  the  fog- 
clouds,  like  the  reflected  light  from  a  burning  barn 
or  house  in  the  country,  and  inferred  at  once  that 
it  came  from  the  volcano,  which  it  did.  From  my 
window  that  night,  as  I  lay  in  bed,  I  could  see 
this  same  angry  glow  upon  the  clouds.  The  smell 
of  sulphur  was  in  the  air  about  the  hotel,  and  very 
hot  steam  was  issuing  from  cracks  in  the  rocks.  A 
party  of  tourists  on  horseback,  in  the  spirit  of  true 
American  hurry,  visited  the  volcano  that  night,  but 
we  chose  to  wait  until  the  morrow. 

The  next  morning  the  great  crater  of  Kilauea  was 
filled  with  fog,  but  it  lifted,  and  the  sun  shone  be- 

150 


HOLIDAYS  IN  HAWAII 

fore  noon.  We  passed  a  pleasant  forenoon  strolling 
along  the  tree-fringed  brink,  looking  down  eight  or 
nine  hundred  feet  upon  its  black  lava  floor,  and 
plucking  ohelo  berries,  which  grew  there  abund- 
antly, a  kind  of  large,  red  huckleberry  that  one  could 
eat  out  of  hand,  but  that  one  could  not  get  excited 
over.  They  were  better  in  a  pie  than  in  the  hand. 
Their  name  seemed  to  go  well  with  the  suggestion  of 
the  scenes  amid  which  they  grew.  Kilauea  is  a  round 
extinct  crater  about  three  miles  across  and  seven 
or  eight  hundred  feet  deep.  It  has  been  the  scene 
of  terrific  explosions  in  past  ages,  but  it  has  now 
dwindled  to  the  small  active  crater  of  Halemaumau, 
which  is  sunk  near  the  middle  of  it  like  a  huge  pot, 
two  hundred  or  more  feet  deep  and  a  thousand  feet 
across. 

In  the  mid-afternoon  a  party  of  eight  or  ten  of  us 
on  horseback  set  out  to  visit  the  volcano.  The  trail 
led  down  the  broken  and  shelving  side  of  the  crater, 
amid  trees  and  bushes,  till  it  struck  the  floor  of  lava 
at  the  bottom.  In  going  down  I  was  aware  all  the 
time  of  a  beautiful  bird-song  off  on  my  left,  a  song 
almost  as  sweet  as  that  of  our  hermit  thrush,  but  of 
an  entirely  different  order.  I  think  it  was  the  song 
of  one  of  the  honey-suckers,  a  red  bird  with  black 
wings  that  in  flight  looked  like  our  scarlet  tanager. 

Our  course  took  us  out  over  the  cracked  and  con- 
torted lava-beds,  where  no  green  thing  was  growing. 
The  forms  of  the  lava-flow  suggested  mailed  and 

151 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

writhing  dragons,  with  horrid,  gaping  mouths  and 
vicious  claws.  The  lava  crunched  beneath  the 
horses'  feet  like  shelly  and  brittle  ice.  At  one  point 
we  passed  over  a  wide,  jagged  crack  on  a  bridge. 
As  we  neared  the  crater,  the  rocks  grew  warm,  and 
sulphur  and  other  fumes  streaked  the  air. 

When  a  half-mile  from  the  crater  we  dismounted, 
and,  leaving  our  horses  in  charge  of  the  guide,  pro- 
ceeded on  foot  over  the  cracked  and  heated  lava 
rocks  toward  the  brink  of  this  veritable  devil's 
caldron.  The  sulphur  fumes  are  so  suffocating  that 
it  can  be  approached  only  on  the  windward  side. 
The  first  glance  into  that  fearful  pit  is  all  that  your 
imagination  can  picture  it.  You  look  upon  the  tra- 
ditional lake  of  brimstone  and  fire,  and  if  devils 
were  to  appear  skipping  about  over  the  surface  with 
pitchforks,  turning  their  victims  as  the  cook  turns 
her  frying  crullers  in  the  sputtering  fat,  it  would 
not  much  astonish  you.  This  liquid  is  rather  thick 
and  viscid,  but  it  is  boiling  furiously.  Great  masses 
of  it  are  thrown  up  forty  or  fifty  feet,  and  fall  with 
a  crash  like  that  of  the  surf  upon  the  shore.  Livid 
jets  are  thrown  up  many  feet  high  against  the  sides 
and  drip  back,  cooling  quickly  as  the  lava  descends. 
We  sat  or  stood  upon  the  brink,  at  times  almost  let- 
ting our  feet  hang  over  the  sides,  and  shielding  our 
faces  from  the  intense  heat  with  paper  masks  and 
veils.  It  is  probably  the  only  place  in  the  world 
where  you  can  come  face  to  face  with  the  heart  of 

152 


HOLIDAYS   IN   HAWAII 

an  active  volcano.  There  are  no  veils  of  vapor  to 
hide  it  from  you.  It  appears  easy  enough  to  cast  a 
stone  into  the  midst  of  it,  but  none  of  us  could  quite 
do  it. 

The  mass  of  boiling  lava  is  said  to  be  about  one 
and  one  half  acres  in  extent.  Its  surface  is  covered 
with  large  masses  of  floating  crust,  black  and 
smooth,  like  leather  or  roofing-paper,  and  between 
these  masses,  or  islands,  the  molten  lava  shows  in 
broad,  vivid  lines.  It  is  never  quiet.  When  not 
actually  boiling,  there  is  a  slow  circulatory  move- 
ment, and  the  great  flakes  of  black  crust,  suggest- 
ing scum,  drift  across  from  one  end  to  the  other  and 
are  drawn  under  the  rocks.  At  one  moment  only  this 
movement  is  apparent,  then  suddenly  the  mass  be- 
gins to  boil  furiously  all  over  the  surface,  and  you 
hear  dimly  the  sound  of  the  bursting  bubbles  and 
the  crash  of  the  falling  lava.  When  this  takes  place, 
the  black  floating  masses  are  broken  up  and  scat- 
tered as  they  are  in  boiling  maple-syrup,  but  they 
quickly  reunite,  and  are  carried  on  by  the  current 
as  before. 

Looking  upon  this  scene  with  the  thought  of  the 
traditional  lake  of  fire  and  brimstone  of  our  fore- 
fathers in  mind,  you  would  say  that  these  black, 
filthy-looking  masses  floating  about  on  the  surface 
were  the  accumulation  of  all  the  bad  stuff  that  had 
been  fried  out  of  the  poor  sinners  since  hell  was  in- 
vented.  How  much  wickedness  and  uncharity  and 

15f5 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

evil  thought  it  would  represent !  If  the  poor  victims 
were  clarified  and  made  purer  by  the  process,  then  it 
would  seem  worth  while. 

At  the  Volcano  House  they  keep  a  book  in  which 
tourists  write  down  their  impressions  of  the  volcano. 
A  distinguished  statesman  had  been  there  a  few  days 
before  us,  and  had  written  a  long  account  of  his 
impressions,  closing  with  this  oratorical  sentence: 
"No  pen,  however  gifted,  can  describe,  no  brush, 
however  brilliant,  can  portray,  the  wonders  we  have 
been  permitted  to  behold."  I  could  not  refrain  from 
writing  under  it,  '*I  have  seen  the  orthodox  hell, 
and  it's  the  real  thing." 

That  huge  kettle  of  molten  metal,  mantling  and 
bubbling,  how  it  is  impressed  upon  my  memory! 
It  is  a  vestige  of  the  ancient  cosmic  fire  that  once 
wrapped  the  whole  globe  in  its  embrace.  It  had  a 
kind  of  brutal  fascination.  One  could  not  take  one's 
eyes  from  it.  That  network  of  broad,  jagged,  fiery 
lines  defining  those  black,  smooth  masses,  or  islands, 
of  floating  matter  told  of  a  side  of  nature  we  had 
never  before  seen.  We  lingered  there  on  the  brink 
of  the  fearful  spectacle  till  night  came  on,  and  the 
sides  of  the  mighty  caldron,  and  the  fog-clouds 
above  it,  glowed  in  the  infernal  light.  Not  so  white 
as  the  metal  pouring  from  a  blast  furnace,  not  so  hot, 
a  more  sullen  red,  but  welling  up  from  the  central 
primordial  fires  of  the  earth.  This  great  pot  has 
boiled  over  many  times  in  the  recent  past,  as  the 

154 


HOLIDAYS  IN  HAWAII 

lava-beds  we  traveled  over  testify,  and  it  will 
probably  boil  over  again.  It  has  been  unusually 
active  these  last  few  years. 

About  nine  o'clock  we  rode  back,  facing  a  cold, 
driving  mist,  the  back  of  each  rider,  protected  by 
the  shining  yellow  *' slickers,"  glowing  to  the  one 
behind  him,  in  the  volcano's  light,  till  we  were  a 
mile  or  more  away. 

The  next  morning  came  clear,  and  the  sight  of  the 
mighty  slope  of  Mauna  Loa,  lit  up  by  the  rising  sun, 
was  a  grand  spectacle.  It  looked  gentle  and  easy  of 
ascent,  wooded  here  and  there,  and  here  and  there 
showing  broad,  black  streaks  from  the  lava  over- 
flows at  the  summit  in  recent  years ;  but  remember- 
ing that  it  was  nearly  four  thousand  feet  higher  than 
Haleakala,  I  had  no  desire  to  cHmb  it.  This  moun- 
tain and  its  companion,  Mauna  Kea,  are  the  high- 
est island  mountains  in  the  world. 

The  stage  rolled  us  back  through  the  fern  forest 
to  the  railway  station  and  thence  on  to  Hilo  again, 
where  in  good  time,  in  the  afternoon,  we  went 
aboard  the  steamer;  and  the  next  morning  we  were 
again  in  the  harbor  of  Honolulu,  glad  we  had  made 
the  inter-island  trip,  and  above  all  glad  that  we  had 
seen  Haleakala. 


\ 


VI 
THE  OLD  ICE-FLOOD 


HE  was  a  bold  man  who  first  conceived  the  idea 
of  the  great  continental  ice-sheet  which  in 
Pleistocene  times  covered  most  of  the  northern  part 
of  the  continent,  and  played  such  a  part  in  shaping 
the  land  as  we  know  it.  That  bold  man  was  Agas- 
siz,  who,  however,  was  not  bold  enough  to  accept 
the  theory  of  evolution  as  propounded  by  Darwin. 
The  idea  of  the  great  glacier  did  not  conflict  with 
Agassiz's  religious  predilections,  and  the  theory  of 
evolution  did.  It  was  a  bold  generalization,  this  of 
the  continental  ice-sheet,  one  of  the  master-strokes 
of  the  scientific  imagination.  It  was  about  the  year 
1840  that  Agassiz,  fresh  from  the  glaciers  of  the  Alps, 
went  to  Scotland  looking  for  the  tracks  of  the  old 
glaciers,  and  he  found  them  at  once  when  he  landed 
near  Glasgow.  We  can  all  find  them  now  on  almost 
every  walk  we  take  to  the  fields  and  hills;  but  until 
our  eyes  are  opened,  how  blind  we  are  to  them! 
We  are  like  people  who  camp  on  the  trail  of  an 
army  and  never  suspect  an  army  has  passed,  though 
the  ruts  made  by  their  wagons  and  artillerj^  and 

157 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

the   ruins  of   their  intrenchments  are  everywhere 
visible. 

When  I  was  a  boy  on  the  farm  we  never  asked 
ourselves  questions  about  the  stones  and  rocks  that 
encumbered  the  land  —  whence  they  came,  or  what 
the  agency  was  that  brought  them.  The  farmers 
believed  the  land  was  created  just  as  we  saw  it  — 
stones,  boulders,  soil,  gravel-pits,  hills,  mountains, 
and  all  —  and  doubtless  wished  in  their  hearts 
that  the  Creator  had  not  been  so  particular  about 
the  rocks  and  stones,  or  had  made  an  exception 
in  favor  of  their  own  fields.  Rocks  and  stones  were 
good  for  fences  and  foundations,  and  for  various 
other  uses,  but  they  were  a  great  hindrance  to  the 
cultivation  of  the  soil.  I  once  heard  a  farmer  boast 
that  he  had  very  strong  land  —  it  had  to  be  strong 
to  hold  up  such  a  crop  of  rocks  and  stones.  When 
the  Eastern  farmer  moved  west  into  the  prairie 
states,  or  south  into  the  cotton-growing  states, 
he  probably  never  asked  himself  why  the  Creator 
had  not  cumbered  the  ground  with  rocks  and  stones 
in  those  sections,  as  he  had  in  New  York  and  New 
England.  South  of  the  line  that  runs  irregularly 
through  middle  New  Jersey,  Pennsylvania,  Ohio, 
Indiana,  Illinois,  Iowa,  and  so  on  to  the  Rockies, 
he  will  find  few  loose  stones  scattered  over  the  soil, 
no  detached  boulders  sitting  upon  the  surface,  no 
hills  or  mounds  of  gravel  and  sand,  no  clay  banks 
packed  full  of  rounded  stones,  little  and  big,  no 

158 


THE  OLD   ICE-FLOOD 

rock>^  floors  under  the  soil  which  look  as  if  they  had 
been  dressed  down  by  a  huge  but  dulled  and  nicked 
jack-plane.  The  reason  is  that  the  line  I  have 
indicated  marks  the  limit  of  the  old  ice-sheet  which 
more  than  a  hundred  thousand  years  ago  covered 
all  the  northern  part  of  the  continent  to  a  depth  of 
from  two  to  four  thousand  feet,  and  was  the  chief 
instrument  in  rounding  off  mountain-tops,  scatter- 
ing rock-fragments,  little  and  big,  over  our  land- 
scapes, grinding  down  and  breaking  off  the  protrud- 
ing rock  strata,  building  up  our  banks  of  mingled 
clay  and  stone,  changing  the  courses  of  streams  and 
rivers,  deepening  and  widening  our  valleys,  trans- 
planting boulders  of  one  formation  for  hundreds  of 
miles,  and  dropping  them  upon  the  surface  of  an- 
other formation.  When  it  began  to  melt  and  re- 
treat, it  was  the  chief  agent  in  building  up  our  river 
terraces,  and  our  long,  low,  rounded  hills  of  sand 
and  gravel  and  clay,  called  kames  and  drumlins. 
In  many  of  our  valleys  its  flowing  waters  left  long, 
low  ridges,  gentle  in  outline,  made  up  entirely  of 
sand  and  gravel,  or  of  clay.  In  other  places  it  left 
moraines  made  up  of  earth,  gravel,  and  rock-frag- 
ments that  make  a  very  rough  streak  through  the 
farmer's  land.  All  those  high,  level  terraces  along 
the  Hudson,  such  as  that  upon  which  West  Point 
stands,  were  the  work  of  the  old  ice-sheet  that  once 
filled  the  river  valley.  The  melting  ice  was  also  the 
chief  agent  in  building  up  the  enormous  clay-banks 

159 


TIME  AND   CHANGE 

that  are  found  along  the  shores  of  the  Hudson. 
The  clay  formed  in  very  still  waters,  the  sand  and 
gravel  in  more  active  waters. 

This  great  ice-sheet  not  only  covered  our  northern 
farms  with  rocks  and  stones,  and  packed  the  soil 
with  rounded  boulders,  but  it  also  carried  away 
much  of  the  rock  decay  that  goes  to  the  making  of 
the  soil,  so  that  the  soil  is  of  greater  depth  in  the 
non-glaciated  than  in  the  glaciated  areas  of  the 
country.  The  New-Englander  or  New-Yorker  in 
traveling  in  the  Southern  States  may  note  the  enor- 
mous depth  of  soil  as  revealed  by  the  water-courses 
or  railroad  cuts.  The  ice-sheet  was  a  huge  mill  that 
ground  up  the  rocks  in  the  North  probably  as  fast 
or  faster  than  the  rains  and  the  rank  vegetation 
reduced  them  in  the  South,  but  the  floods  of  water 
which  it  finally  let  loose  carried  a  great  deal  of  the 
rock- waste  into  the  sea. 

The  glacier  milk  which  colors  the  streams  that 
flow  from  beneath  it  finally  settles  and  makes  clay. 
Off  the  great  Malaspina  Glacier  in  Alaska  the  ocean  is 
tinged  by  the  glacier  milk  for  nearly  fifty  miles  from 
the  shores.  Very  few  country  people,  even  among 
the  educated,  are  ready  to  believe  that  this  enor- 
mous ice-sheet  ever  existed.  To  make  them  believe 
that  it  is  just  as  much  a  fact  in  the  physical  history 
of  this  continent  as  the  war  of  the  Revolution  is  a 
fact  in  our  political  history  is  no  easy  matter.  It 
certainly  is  a  crushing  proposition.    It  so  vastly 

160 


THE  OLD  ICE-FLOOD 

transcends  all  our  experience  with  ice  and  snow,  or 
the  experience  of  the  race  since  the  dawn  of  histoids 
that  only  the  scientific  imagination  and  faith  are 
equal  to  it.  The  belief  in  it  rests  on  indubitable  evi- 
dence, its  record  is  written  all  over  our  landscape, 
but  it  requires,  I  say,  the  scientific  imagination  to 
put  the  facts  together  and  make  a  continuous  his- 
tory. 

Three  or  four  hundred  feet  above  my  cabin,  five 
or  six  hundred  feet  above  tidewater,  there  is  a  bold 
rocky  point  upon  which  the  old  ice-sheet  bore  heav- 
ily. It  has  rubbed  it  down  and  flattened  it  as  a 
hand  passing  over  a  knob  of  soft  putty  might  do. 
The  great  hand  in  this  case  moved  from  the  north- 
east and  must  have  fairly  made  this  rocky  promin- 
ence groan  with  its  weight.  The  surface,  scratched 
and  grooved  and  planed  by  the  ice,  has  weathered 
away,  leaving  the  rock  quite  rough;  its  general  out- 
lines alone  tell  the  tale  of  the  battle  with  the  ice. 
But  on  the  east  side  a  huge  mass  of  rock,  that  had 
been  planed  and  gouged  by  the  glacier,  was  detached 
and  toppled  over,  turning  topsy-turvy  before  it  had 
weathered,  and  it  lies  in  such  a  position,  upheld 
by  two  rock  fragments,  that  its  glaciated  surface, 
though  protected  from  the  weather,  is  clearly  visi- 
ble. You  step  down  two  or  three  feet  between  the 
two  upholding  rocks  and  are  at  the  entrance  of  a 
little  cave,  and  there  before  you,  standing  at  an 
angle  of  thirty  or  forty  degrees,  is  this  rocky  page 

IGl 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

written  over  with  the  history  of  the  passing  of  the 
great  ice  plane.  The  surface  exposed  is  ten  or  twelve 
feet  long,  and  four  or  five  feet  wide,  and  it  is  as 
straight  and  smooth,  and  the  scratches  and  grooves 
are  as  sharp  and  distinct  as  if  made  yesterday.  I 
often  take  the  college  girls  there  who  come  to  visit 
me,  to  show  them,  as  I  tell  them,  where  the  old  ice 
gods  left  their  signatures.  The  girls  take  turns  in 
stooping  down  and  looking  along  the  under  surface 
of  the  rock,  and  feeling  it  with  their  hands,  and 
marveling.  They  have  read  or  heard  about  these 
things,  but  the  reading  or  hearing  made  little  im- 
pression upon  their  minds.  When  they  see  a  con- 
crete example,  and  feel  it  with  their  hands,  they  are 
impressed.  Then  when  I  tell  them  that  there  is  not 
a  shadow  of  a  doubt  but  that  the  ice  was  at  one  time 
two  or  three  thousand  feet  thick  above  the  place 
where  they  now  stand,  and  that  it  bore  down  upon 
Julian's  Rock  with  a  weight  of  thousands  of  tons  to 
the  square  foot,  that  it  filled  all  the  Hudson  River 
Valley,  and  covered  the  landscape  for  thousands  of 
miles  around  them,  riding  over  the  tops  of  the  Cat- 
skills  and  of  the  Adirondacks,  and  wearing  them 
down  and  carrying  fragments  of  rock  torn  from 
them  hundreds  of  miles  to  the  south  and  southwest, 
—  when  I  have  told  them  all  of  this,  I  have  usually 
given  them  a  mouthful  too  big  for  them  to  masticate 
or  swallow.  As  a  sort  of  abstract  proposition  con- 
tained in  books,  or  heard  in  the  classroom,  they  do 

162 


THE  OLD   ICE-FLOOD 

not  mind  it,  but  as  an  actual  fact,  here  in  the  light 
of  common  day  on  the  hill  above  Slabsides,  with  the 
waters  of  the  Hudson  glistening  below,  and  the  trees 
rustling  in  the  wind  all  about  us,  that  is  quite  an- 
other matter.  It  sounds  like  a  dream  or  a  fable. 
Many  of  the  processes  that  have  made  our  globe 
what  we  see  it  have  been  so  slow  and  on  such  a  scale 
that  they  are  quite  beyond  our  horizon  —  beyond 
the  reach  of  our  mental  apprehension.  The  mind 
has  to  approach  them  slowly  and  tentatively,  and 
become  familiar  with  the  idea  of  them, before  it  can 
give  any  sort  of  rational  assent  to  them.  It  has 
taken  the  geologist  a  long  time  to  work  out  and 
clear  up  and  confirm  this  conception  of  the  great 
continental  glacier  which  in  Pleistocene  times  cov- 
ered so  large  a  part  of  the  northern  hemisphere. 
It  is  now  as  well  established  as  any  event  in  the  re- 
mote past  well  can  be.  In  Alaska,  and  in  the  Swiss 
Alps,  one  may  see  the  ice  doing  exactly  what  the 
Pleistocene  ice-sheet  did  over  this  country\ 

II 

The  other  day  in  passing  a  farmer's  house  I  saw 
where  he  had  placed  a  huge,  roundish  boulder, 
nearly  as  high  as  a  man's  head,  by  the  roadside  and 
had  cut  upon  it  his  own  name  and  date,  and  that  of 
his  father  before  him,  and  that  of  the  first  settler 
upon  the  farm,  in  the  latter  part  of  the  eighteenth 
century.     It   was    an    interesting   monument.     I 

163 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

learned  that  the  rock  had  been  found  in  the  bed  of 
a  small  creek  near  by,  and  that  the  farmer  had  given 
a  hundred  dollars  to  have  it  moved  to  its  place  in 
front  of  his  house.  Had  I  seen  the  old  farmer  I  am 
sure  I  could  have  added  to  his  interest  and  pride 
in  his  monument  by  telling  him  that  it  was  Adiron- 
dack gneiss,  and  had  been  brought  from  that  region 
on  the  back,  or  in  the  maw,  of  a  glacier,  many  tens 
of  thousands  of  years  ago.  But  it  is  highly  probable 
that,  were  he  an  uneducated  man,  he  would  have 
treated  my  statement  with  contempt  or  incredulity. 
Education  does  at  least  this  for  a  man :  it  opens  his 
mind  and  makes  him  less  skeptical  about  things  not 
dreamed  of  in  his  philosophy. 

This  boulder  had  been  rolled  and  worn  in  its  long, 
slow  ride  till  it  was  nearly  round.  I  have  a  much 
smaller  boulder,  probably  from  the  same  quarry, 
which  I  planted  at  the  head  of  my  garden  for  a  seat 
when  the  hoe  gets  tired.  When  it  was  dropped  here 
on  the  land  that  is  now  my  field,  the  bed  and  valley 
of  the  Hudson  were  occupied  by  the  old  glacier 
which,  during  its  decline  and  recession,  built  up 
the  terraces  opposite  me  (where  now  stands  a 
multimillionaire's  copy  of  an  Italian  palace),  and 
which  added  to  and  uncovered  the  river  slopes  where 
now  my  own  vineyards  are  planted. 

The  flowing  or  the  creeping  of  this  old  ice-sheet, 
so  that  it  could  transport  large  boulders  hundreds 
of  miles,  is  one  of  the  most  remarkable  things  about 

164 


THE  OLD  ICE-FLOOD 

it:  as  slow  or  slower  than  the  hour-hand  of  the 
clock,  yet  an  actual  progression,  carrying  it,  in  the 
course  of  thousands  of  years,  from  its  apex  in 
Labrador  well  down  into  New  Jersey,  where  its 
terminal  moraine  is  still  clearly  traceable. 

A  river  of  ice,  under  the  right  conditions,  flows  as 
literally  as  a  river  of  water,  fastest  in  the  middle, 
and  slowest  along  its  margins  where  the  friction  is 
greatest.  The  old  ice-sheet,  or  ice  sea,  flowed  around 
and  over  mountains  as  a  river  flows  around  and  over 
rocks.  Where  a  mountain  rose  above  the  glacier, 
the  ice  divided  and  flowed  round  it,  and  reunited 
again  beyond  it.  One  may  see  all  this  in  Alaska  at 
the  present  time.  Water,  of  course,  flows  because  of 
its  own  pressure;  so  does  ice,  only  the  pressure  has 
to  be  vastly  greater.  A  drop  of  water  on  the  table 
does  not  flow,  but,  pile  it  high  enough,  and  it  will. 
The  old  ice  sea  flowed  mainly  south,  not  because  it 
was  downhill  in  that  direction,  but  because  the 
accumulation  of  ice  and  snow  at  the  North  was  so 
great.  If  through  any  climatic  changes,  the  snow- 
fall were  ever  again  to  be  so  great  that  more  snow 
should  fall  in  winter  than  could  melt  in  summer, 
after  the  lapse  of  thousands  of  years,  we  should 
have  another  ice  age. 


VII 
THE  FRIENDLY  SOIL 

I  NEVER  tire  of  contemplating  the  soil  itself,  the 
mantle  rock,  as  the  geologist  calls  it.  It  clothes 
the  rocky  framework  of  the  earth  as  the  flesh  clothes 
our  bones.  It  is  the  seat  of  the  vitality  of  the  globe, 
the  youngest  part,  the  growing,  changing  part.  Out 
of  it  we  came,  and  to  it  we  return.  It  is  literally  our 
mother,  as  the  sun  is  our  father. 

The  soil !  —  the  residuum  of  the  rocks,  the  ashes  of 
the  mountains.  We  know  what  a  vast  stretch  of 
time  has  gone  to  the  making  of  it;  that  it  has  been 
baked  and  boiled  and  frozen  and  thawed,  acted 
upon  by  sun  and  star  and  wind  and  rain;  mixed  and 
remixed  and  kneaded  and  added  to,  as  the  house- 
wife kneads  and  moulds  her  bread;  that  it  has  lain 
under  the  seas  in  the  stratified  rocks  for  incalculable 
ages;  that  chemical  and  mechanical  and  vital  forces 
have  all  had  a  hand  in  its  preparation;  that  the  vast 
cycles  of  animal  and  vegetable  life  of  the  foreworld 
have  contributed  to  its  fertility;  that  the  life  of  the 
sea,  and  the  monsters  of  the  earth,  and  the  dragons 
of  the  air,  have  left  their  ashes  here,  so  that  when  I 
stir  it  with  my  hoe,  or  turn  it  with  my  spade,  I  know 

167 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

I  am  stirring  or  turning  the  meal  of  a  veritable  grist 
of  the  gods. 

From  its  primal  source  in  the  Archaean  rock,  up 
through  all  the  vast  series  of  sedimentary  rocks  to 
our  own  time,  what  vicissitudes  and  transforma- 
tions it  has  passed  through;  how  many  times  it  has 
died,  so  to  speak,  and  been  reborn  from  the  rocks; 
how  many  times  the  winds  and  the  rains  have  trans- 
ported it,  and  infused  invisible,  life-giving  gases  into 
it;  how  many  of  the  elements  have  throbbed  with 
life,  climbed  and  bloomed  in  trees,  walked  or  flown 
or  swam  in  animals,  or  slumbered  for  thousands 
upon  thousands  of  years  beneath  the  great  ice-sheet 
of  Pleistocene  time!  A  handful  of  the  soil  by  your 
door  is  probably  the  most  composite  thing  you  can 
find  in  a  day's  journey.  It  may  be  an  epitome  of  a 
whole  geological  formation,  or  of  two  or  more  of 
them.  If  it  happens  to  be  made  up  of  decomposed 
limestone,  sandstone,  slate,  and  basalt  rock,  think 
what  a  history  would  be  condensed  in  it ! 

Our  lawns  are  made  up  of  ashes  from  the  funeral 
pyre  of!  mountains,  of  dust  from  the  tombs  of  geo- 
logic ages.  What  masses  of  rock  does  this  sandbank 
represent!  what  an  enormous  grist  in  the  great 
glacier  mill  do  these  layers  of  clay  stand  for!  Two 
feet  of  soil  probably  represent  a  hundred  feet  or 
more  of  rock.  Strictly  speaking,  the  soil  is  the  insol- 
uble parts  of  the  ground-up  and  decomposed  rocks, 
after  the  rains  and  the  winds  have  done  their  work 

168 


THE   FRIENDLY  SOIL 

and  taken  their  toll  of  the  grist  they  have  ground. 
Sometimes  these  mills  take  the  whole  grist  and  leave 
the  rocks  bare;  but  usually  they  leave  a  residuum 
in  which  life  strikes  its  roots.  We  do  not  see  all  that 
the  waters  take  from  the  soil.  They  have  invisible 
pockets  in  which  they  carry  away  all  the  more 
soluble  parts,  such  as  lime,  soda,  potash,  silica, 
magnesia,  and  others,  and  leave  for  the  land  the  more 
insoluble  parts.  These,  too,  in  times  of  flood  they 
carry  away  in  suspension,  in  the  shape  of  sand,  silt, 
mud,  gravel,  and  the  like.  When  the  waters  really 
digest  the  rocks,  they  hold  the  various  minerals  in 
solution,  and  run  limpid  and  dancing  to  the  sea; 
when  they  have  an  undigested  burden,  they  run 
angry  and  turbid. 

It  is  estimated  that  the  Hudson  River  deposits 
in  the  sea  each  year  four  hundred  and  forty 
thousand  tons  of  mineral  matter  in  solution  which 
it  has  taken  from  the  land,  and  the  Mississippi  one 
hundred  and  twelve  million  tons.  Each  carries 
away  about  four  times  as  much  in  suspension.  The 
digestive  or  chemical  power  of  water,  then,  is  only 
about  one  fourth  as  great  as  its  mechanical  power. 
Between  the  two  the  land  is  made  to  pay  heavy  toll 
to  the  sea.  But  in  time,  in  geologic  time,  it  all  comes 
back.  The  suspended  particles  are  dropped  and  go 
to  make  up  the  sedimentary  rocks,  while  the  solutes 
help  cement  the  material  of  these  rocks  together, 
and  also  nourish  the  sea  life  from  which  limestone 

169 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

and  other  organic  rocks  are  made.  When  these 
rocks  are  again  lifted  to  the  surface  and  disinte- 
grated into  soil,  then  the  debt  of  the  sea  to  the  land 
is  paid.  This  process,  this  cycle  of  soil  loss  and  soil 
growth,  has  gone  on  through  all  time,  and  must  con- 
tinue as  long  as  the  rain  continues  to  fall,  or  as  long 
as  the  sea  continues  to  send  its  tax-gatherers  to  the 
land.  In  this  great  cycle  of  give  and  take  of  the 
elements,  the  affairs  of  men  cut  but  a  momentary 
figure;  how  puny  they  are,  how  transient !  How  the 
great  changes,  which  in  time  amount  to  revolutions, 
go  on  over  our  heads  and  under  our  feet,  and  we 
rarely  heed  them,  and  are  powerless  to  stay  them! 
A  summer  shower  carries  the  soil  of  my  side-hill, 
which  is  mainly  disintegrated  Silurian  rock  and 
shale,  into  the  river,  and  some  millions  of  years 
hence,  when  it  has  become  stratified  rock,  and  been 
lifted  up  into  the  light  of  day,  some  other,  and,  I 
trust,  wiser  husbandman,  will  be  gathering  his  har- 
vest from  it,  and  be  worried  over  the  downpour 
that  robs  him  of  it.  The  farmer's  worry  is  bound  to 
come  back  with  the  soil,  and  be  passed  along  with  it. 


VIII 
PRIMAL  ENERGIES 

HOW  puny  and  meagre  is  the  utmost  power  man 
can  put  forth,  even  by  the  aid  of  all  his 
mechanical  appliances,  when  compared  with  the 
primal  earth  forces!  Think,  or  try  to  think,  of  the 
force  of  pressure  that  causes  the  rock-strata  to 
buckle  or  crumple  or  bend  —  layers  of  rock,  thou- 
sands of  feet  thick,  made  to  fold  and  bend  like  the 
leaves  of  a  book  —  vast  mountain-chains  flexed  and 
foreshortened,  or  ruptured  and  faulted  as  the  bend- 
ing of  one's  body  wrinkles  or  rips  one's  clothes. 
Think  of  the  over-thrusts  and  the  folding  and  shear- 
ing of  the  earth's  crust.  The  shrinking  of  the  earth 
squeezes  the  rocks  to  an  extent  quite  beyond  our 
power  of  conception.  "So  overpowering  has  been 
the  horizontal  movement  in  some  cases,"  says 
Dana,  "that  masses  of  rock  thousands  of  feet  in 
thickness  have  been  buckled  up  and  sheared,  or, 
simply  yielding  to  pressure,  have  sheared  without 
folding,  and  been  thrust  forward  for  miles  along  a 
gently  inclined  plane.  These  great  reversed  faults 
are  termed  over- thrusts  or  thrust-planes.  Some- 
times such  thrust-planes  occur  singly,  at  other  times 
the  rocks  have  yielded  again  and  again,  great  sheets 
having  been  sliced  off  successively,  and  driven  for- 

171 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

ward  one  upon  the  other."  In  northern  Montana 
there  is  an  over-thrust  of  the  Cambrian  rocks  upon 
the  late  Cretaceous,  of  seven  or  eight  miles,  carry- 
ing with  it  what  is  now  called  "Chief  Mountain," 
which  has  been  carved  out  of  the  extreme  end  of  the 
over-thrust.  The  contemplation  of  such  things  gives 
one  a  sense  of  power  in  Nature  beyond  anything  else 
I  know  of.  The  shrinking  of  the  globe  as  a  whole 
makes  its  rocky  garment  too  big  for  it,  and  this 
titanic  wrinkling  and  folding  results.  When  the 
strata  snap  asunder  under  the  strain,  we  have  earth- 
quakes. During  the  recent  San  Francisco  earth- 
quake. Mount  Tamalpais,  across  the  bay,  and  all 
the  neighboring  heights,  were  permanently  shifted 
eight  or  ten  feet.  The  sides  of  the  mountain,  it  is 
said,  undulated  like  a  curtain.  And  this  shaking 
and  twitching  of  the  great  rocky  skin  of  the  earth 
was  vastly  less,  in  proportion  to  the  size  of  the  globe, 
than  the  twitching  and  trembling  of  the  skin  of  a 
horse  when  he  would  shake  off  the  flies,  in  compari- 
son with  the  animal's  body. 

We  see  another  exhibition  of  the  magnitude  of  the 
earth's  forces  in  what  the  geologist  calls  a  "lacco- 
lite"  —  a  great  cave  or  cistern  deep  beneath  the 
surface  of  stratified  rock  filled  with  hardened  lava. 
The  lava  is  forced  up  from  an  unknown  depth  under 
such  pressure  that,  not  finding  an  outlet  at  the  sur- 
face, the  rock  strata,  hundreds  or  thousands  of  feet 
thick,  are  lifted  up  and  arched  like  so  much  paper, 

172 


PRIMAL  ENERGIES 

and  in  the  cavity  thus  formed  the  pent-up  molten 
lava  finds  relief.  These  lava  cisterns  or  pockets  are 
sometimes  uncovered  by  the  process  of  erosion. 
The  Henry  Mountains  in  Utah  are  all  laccolites. 
One  of  them,  Mount  Hillers,  has  a  volume  of  about 
ten  cubic  miles.  Much  of  the  overarching  sedimen- 
tary strata  still  covers  it.  Geologists  read  the  evi- 
dence of  a  similar  formation  called  a  "sill"  on  the 
west  side  of  the  Hudson  in  New  Jersey,  forming  the 
Palisades.  The  lava  worked  like  a  giant  mole  up 
through  and  then  beneath  the  Triassic  sandstone, 
lifting  the  strata  up  and  arching  them  over  a  large 
area.  During  the  millions  of  years  that  have  elapsed 
since  that  time,  the  layers  of  superincumbent  sand- 
stone have  been  worn  away  so  that  now  one  sees  a 
wide,  smooth,  gentle  slope  of  basaltic  rock  covered 
by  a  very  thin  coat  of  soil.  As  one  goes  by  on  the 
train,  one  sees  where  the  workmen  of  a  stone-crush- 
ing plant  have  cut  into  the  slope  and  uncovered  the 
junction  of  the  two  kinds  of  rock,  one  born  of  water, 
and  one  born  of  fire.  The  igneous  rock  sits  squarely 
upon  the  level  sandstone,  like  a  row  of  upright 
books  standing  upon  a  shelf.  I  never  pass  the  place 
but  that  I  want  to  stop  the  train  and  get  out  and 
have  a  close  look  at  the  precise  spot  where  this  son 
of  Vulcan  sat  down  so  heavily  and  so  hot  upon  his 
brother  of  the  sedimentary  deposits. 

Probably  no  two  chapters  of  the  earth's  history 
differ  more  than  those  of  the  two  sides  of  the  Hud- 

173 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

son  at  New  York.  There  is  a  great  break  here  — 
a  leap  from  Archaean  times  on  the  east  side  to  Meso- 
zoic  times  on  the  west.  The  east  side  is  milHons 
of  years  the  older.  Here  is  the  original  Plutonic 
or  Azoic  rock  which  apparently  has  never  been  un- 
der the  sea  since  it  was  first  thrust  up  out  of  the 
fiery  depths.  The  west  shore,  including  the  Palisades, 
belongs  to  a  much  later  geologic  era.  The  original 
granite  here  is  buried  under  vast  deposits  of  sedi- 
mentary rock  of  the  Triassic  age  —  the  age  of  the 
giant  reptiles,  the  remains  of  one  of  which  has  re- 
cently been  found  embedded  in  this  sandstone,  near 
the  river's  edge.  As  the  traveler's  eye  follows  along 
the  even,  almost  level  line  of  this  escarpment  of  the 
Palisades,  let  it  re-create  for  him  the  strata  of  the  old 
Triassic  sandstone  that  were  millions  of  years  ago 
piled  high  upon  it,  —  how  high  can  only  be  conject- 
ured, —  but  which  have  been  removed  grain  by  grain 
under  the  eroding  power  of  the  forces  of  air  and  water 
that  now  seem  to  caress  the  huge  wall  so  gently.  Ah ! 
geologic  Time,  what  can  it  not  do?  what  has  it  not 
done?  The  old  sill  of  Vulcan  now  presents  a  nearly 
vertical  front  to  the  Hudson,  forming  the  Palisades, 
showing  that  some  leaves  of  the  earth's  history  here 
are  missing,  buried  probably  beneath  the  waters  of 
the  river.  There  is  evidently  a  line  of  fault  here, 
and  the  west  side  has  been  lifted  up  out  of  the  old 
Mesozoic  seas,  probably  in  the  convulsions  that 
poured  out  the  lava  of  the  trap  rock. 


IX 

SCIENTIFIC  FAITH 

I  FIND  myself  accepting  certain  things  on  the 
authority  of  science  which  so  far  transcend  my 
experience,  and  the  experience  of  the  race  and  all 
the  knowledge  of  the  world,  in  fact  which  come  so 
near  being  unthinkable,  that  I  call  my  acceptance 
of  them  an  act  of  scientific  faith.  One's  reason  may 
be  convinced  and  yet  the  heart  refuse  to  believe. 
It  is  not  so  much  a  question  of  evidence  as  a  ques- 
tion of  capacity  to  receive  evidence  of  an  unusual 
kind. 

One  of  the  conclusions  of  science  which  I  feel 
forced  to  accept,  and  yet  which  I  find  very  hard 
work  to  believe,  is  that  of  the  animal  origin  of  man. 
I  suppose  my  logical  faculties  are  convinced,  but 
what  is  that  in  me  that  is  baffled,  and  that  hesitates 
and  demurs? 

The  idea  of  the  origin  of  man  from  some  lower 
form  requires  such  a  plunge  into  the  past,  and  such 
a  faith  in  the  transforming  power  of  the  biological 
laws,  and  in  the  divinity  that  lurks  in  the  soil  under- 
foot and  streams  from  the  orbs  overhead,  that  the 
ordinary  mind  is  quite  unequal  to  the  task.  For  the 
book  of  Genesis  of  the  old  Bible  we  have  substituted 

175 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

the  book  of  genesis  of  the  rocky  scripture  of  the 
globe  —  a  book  torn  and  mutilated,  that  has  been 
through  fire  and  flood  and  earthquake  shock,  that 
has  been  in  the  sea  and  on  the  heights,  and  that  only 
the  palaeontologist  can  rea^  or  decipher  correctly, 
but  which  is  a  veritable  bible  of  the  succession  of  life 
on  the  earth.  The  events  of  the  days  of  creation  are 
recorded  here,  but  they  are  days  of  such  length  that 
they  are  to  be  reckoned  »)nly  in  millions  of  years. 

The  evolution  of  the  horse,  according  to  the  best 
and  latest  research,  from  the  eohippus  of  Eocene 
times  —  a  small  mammal  no  larger  than  the  fox  — 
to  the  proud  and  fleet  creature  that  we  prize  to-day, 
occupied  four  or  five  millions  of  years.  Think  of  that 
first  known  progenitor  of  the  horse  as  never  dying, 
but  living  on  through  the  geological  ages  and  being 
slowly,  oh,  so  slowly,  modified  by  its  environment, 
changing  its  teeth,  its  hoofs,  enlarging  its  body, 
lengthening  its  limbs,  and  so  on,  till  it  becomes  the 
horse  we  know  to-day. 

In  accepting  the  theory  of  the  animal  origin  of 
man  we  have  got  to  follow  man  back,  not  only  till 
we  find  him  a  naked  savage  like  the  Fuegians  as 
Darwin  describes  them,  —  naked,  bedaubed  with 
paint,  with  matted  hair  and  looks  wild  and  distrust- 
ful, —  but  we  cannot  stop  there,  we  must  follow  him 
back  till  he  becomes  a  troglodyte,  a  cave-dweller, 
contending  with  the  cave  bear,  the  cave  lion,  and 
the  hyena  for  the  possession  of  this  rude  shelter; 

176 


SCIENTIFIC   FAITH 

back  still,  till  we  find  him  in  trees  living  like  the 
anthropoid  apes;  then  back  to  the  earth  again  to 
some  four-footed  creature,  probably  of  the  marsu- 
pial kind;  still  the  trail  leads  downward  and  ever 
downward,  till  we  lose  it  in  that  maze  of  marine 
forms  that  swarm  in  the  Palaeozoic  seas,  or  until 
the  imagination  is  baffled  and  refuses  to  proceed. 
It  certainly  is  a  hard  proposition,  and  it  puts  one 
upon  his  mettle  to  accept  it. 

Should  we  not  find  equal  difficulty  in  believing 
the  life-history  of  each  one  of  us,  —  the  start  in  the 
germ,  then  the  vague  suggestion  of  fish,  and  frog, 
and  reptile,  in  our  foetal  life,  —  were  it  not  a  matter 
of  daily  experience?  Let  it  be  granted  that  the  race 
of  man  was  born  as  literally  out  of  the  animal  forms 
below  him  as  the  child  is  born  out  of  these  \^ague, 
prenatal  animal  forms  in  its  mother's  womb.  Yet 
the  former  fact  so  far  transcends  our  experience, 
and  even  our  power  of  imagination,  that  we  can 
receive  it  only  by  an  act  of  scientific  faith,  as  our 
fathers  received  the  dogmas  of  the  Church  by  an  act 
of  religious  faith. 

I  confess  that  I  find  it  hard  work  to  get  on  intimate 
terms  with  evolution,  familiarize  my  mind  with  it, 
and  make  it  thinkable.  The  gulf  that  separates  man 
from  the  orders  below  him  is  so  impassable,  his  intelli- 
gence is  so  radically  different  from  theirs,  and  his 
progress  so  enormous,  while  they  have  stood  still, 
that  believing  it  is  like  believing  a  miracle. 

177 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

That  the  apparently  bhnd  groping  and  experi- 
mentation which  mark  the  course  of  evolution  as  re- 
vealed by  palaeontology  —  the  waste,  the  delay,  the 
vicissitudes,  the  hit-and-miss  method  —  should  have 
finally  resulted  in  this  supreme  animal,  man,  puts 
our  scientific  faith  to  the  test.  In  the  light  of  evo- 
lution how  the  halo  with  which  we  have  surrounded 
our  origin  vanishes! 

Man  has  from  the  earliest  period  believed  himself 
of  divine  origin,  and  by  the  divine  he  has  meant 
something  far  removed  from  this  earth  and  all  its 
laws  and  processes,  something  quite  transcending 
the  mundane  forces.  He  has  invented  or  dreamed 
myths  and  legends  to  throw  the  halo  of  the  excep- 
tional, the  far  removed,  the  mystical,  or  the  divine 
around  his  origin.  He  has  spurned  the  clod  with  his 
foot;  he  has  denied  all  kinship  with  bird  and  beast 
around  him,  and  looked  to  the  heavens  above  for  the 
sources  of  his  life.  And  then  unpitying  science  comes 
along  and  tells  him  that  he  is  under  the  same  law  as 
the  life  he  treads  under  foot,  and  that  that  law  is 
adequate  to  transform  the  worm  into  the  man;  that 
he,  too,  has  groveled  in  the  dust,  or  wallowed  in  the 
slime,  or  fought  and  reveled,  a  reptile  among  rep- 
tiles; that  the  heavens  above  him,  to  which  he  turns 
with  such  awe  and  reverence,  or  such  dread  and  fore- 
boding, are  the  source  of  his  life  and  hope  in  no  other 
sense  than  they  are  the  source  of  the  life  and  hope 
of  all  other  creatures.  But  this  is  the  way  of  science; 

178 


SCIENTIFIC  FAITH 

it  enhances  the  value  or  significance  of  everything 
about  us  that  we  are  wont  to  treat  as  cheap  or  vul- 
gar, and  it  discounts  the  value  of  the  things  far  off 
upon  which  we  have  laid  such  stress.  It  ties  us  to  the 
earth,  it  calls  in  the  messengers  we  send  forth  into 
the  unknown;  it  makes  the  astonishing  revelation  — 
revolutionary  revelation,  I  may  say  —  that  the 
earth  is  embosomed  in  the  infinite  heavens  the  same 
as  the  stars  that  shine  above  us,  that  the  creative 
energy  is  working  now  and  here  underfoot,  the  same 
as  in  the  ages  of  myth  and  miracle;  in  other  words, 
that  God  is  really  immanent  in  his  universe,  and  in- 
separable from  it;  that  we  have  been  in  heaven  and 
under  the  celestial  laws  all  our  lives,  and  knew  it  not. 
Science  thus  kills  religion,  poetry,  and  romance  only 
so  far  as  it  dispels  our  illusion^  and  brings  us  back 
from  the  imaginary  to  the  common  and  the  near  at 
hand.  It  discounts  heaven  in  favor  of  earth.  It 
should  make  us  more  at  home  in  the  world,*  and 
more  conscious  of  the  daily  beauty  and  wonders  that 
surround  us,  and,  if  it  does  not,  the  trouble  is  proba- 
bly in  the  ages  of  myth  and  fable  that  lie  behind  us 
and  that  have  left  their  intoxicating  influence  in  our 
blood. 

We  are  willing  to  be  made  out  of  the  dust  of  the 
earth  when  God  makes  us,  the  God  we  have  made 
ourselves  out  of  our  dreams  and  fears  and  aspira- 
tions, but  we  are  not  willing  to  be  made  out  of  the 
dust  of  the  earth  when  the  god  called  Evolution 

179 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

makes  us.  An  impersonal  law  or  process  we  cannot 
revere  or  fear  or  worship  or  exalt;  we  can  only  study 
it  and  put  it  to  the  test.  We  can  love  or  worship 
only  personality.  This  is  why  science  puts  such 
a  damper  upon  us;  it  banishes  personality,  as  we 
have  heretofore  conceived  it,  from  the  universe. 
The  thunder  is  no  longer  the  voice  of  God,  the  earth 
is  no  longer  his  footstool.  Personality  appears  only 
in  man;  the  universe  is  not  inhuman,  but  unhuman. 
It  is  this  discovery  that  we  recoil  from,  and  blame 
science  for;  and  until,  in  the  process  of  time,  'we 
shall  have  adjusted  our  minds,  and  especially  our 
emotions,  to  it,  mankind  will  still  recoil  from  it. 

We  love  our  dreams,  our  imaginings,  as  we  love 
a  prospect  before  our  houses.  We  love  an  outlook 
into  the  ideal,  the  unknown  in  our  lives.  But  we 
love  also  to  feel  the  solid  ground  beneath  our  feet. 

Whether  life  loses  in  charm  as  we  lose  our  illusions, 
and  whether  it  gains  in  power  and  satisfaction  as  we 
more  and  more  reach  solid  ground  in  our  beliefs,  is 
a  question  that  will  be  answered  differently  by  differ- 
ent persons. 

We  have  vastly  more  solid  knowledge  about  the 
universe  amid  which  we  live  than  had  our  fathers, 
but  are  we  fiappier,  better,  stronger?  May  it  not 
be  said  that  our  lives  consist,  not  in  the  number  of 
things  we  know  any  more  than  in  the  number  of 
things  we  possess,  but  in  the  things  we  love,  in  the 
depth  and  sincerity  of  our  emotions,  and  in  the  ele- 

180 


SCIENTIFIC  FAITH 

vation  of  our  aspirations?  Has  not  science  also  en- 
larged the  sphere  of  our  love,  and  given  us  new 
grounds  for  wonder  and  admiration?  It  certainly 
has,  but  it  as  certainly  has  put  a  damper  upon  our 
awe,  our  reverence,  our  veneration.  However  val- 
uable these  emotions  are,  and  whatever  part  they 
may  have  played  in  the  development  of  character 
in  the  past,  they  seem  doomed  to  play  less  and 
less  part  in  the  future.  Poetry  and  religion,  so 
called,  seem  doomed  to  play  less  and  less  part  in  the 
life  of  the  race  in  the  future.  We  shall  still  dream 
and  aspire,  but  we  shall  not  tremble  and  worship 
as  in  the  past. 

We  see  about  us  daily  transformations  as  stu- 
pendous as  that  of  the  evolution  of  man  from  the 
lower  animals,  and  we  marvel  not.  We  see  the  inor- 
ganic pass  into  the  organic,  we  see  iron  and  lime  and 
potash  and  silex  blush  in  the  flowers,  sweeten  in  the 
fruit,  ripen  in  the  grain,  crimson  in  the  blood,  and 
we  marvel  not.  We  see  the  spotless  pond-lily  rising 
and  unfolding  its  snowy  petals,  and  its  trembling 
heart  of  gold,  from  the  black  slime  of  the  pond.  We 
contemplate  our  own  life-history  as  shown  in  our 
pre-natal  life,  and  we  are  not  disturbed.  But  when 
we  stretch  this  process  out  through  the  geologic  ages 
and  try  to  see  ourselves  a  germ,  a  fish,  a  reptile,  in 
the  womb  of  time,  we  are  balked.  We  do  not  see  the 
great  mother,  or  the  great  father,  or  feel  the  lift  of  the 
great  biologic  laws.    We  are  beyond  our  depth.    It 

181 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

is  easy  to  believe  that  the  baby  is  born  of  woman, 
because  it  is  a  matter  of  daily  experience,  but  it  is 
not  easy  to  believe  that  man  is  born  of  the  animal 
world  below  him,  and  that  that  is  born  of  inorganic 
Nature,  because  the  fact  is  too  big  and  tremendous. 

What  we  call  Nature  works  in  no  other  way;  one 
law  is  over  big  and  little  alike.  What  Nature  does 
in  a  day  typifies  what  she  does  in  an  eternity.  It  is 
when  we  reach  the  things  done  on  such  an  enormous 
scale  of  time  and  power  and  size  that  we  are  helpless. 
The  almost  infinitely  slow  transformations  that  the 
theory  of  evolution  demands  balk  us  as  do  the  size 
and  distance  of  the  fixed  stars. 

No  observation  or  study  of  evolution  on  a  small 
scale  and  near  at  hand  in  the  familiar  facts  of  the 
life  about  us  can  prepare  us  for  it,  any  more  than  lake 
and  river  can  prepare  us  for  the  ocean,  or  the  model- 
ing of  miniature  valleys  and  mountains  by  the  rain 
in  the  clay  bank  can  open  our  minds  to  receive  the 
tremendous  facts  of  the  carving  of  the  face  of  the 
continent  by  the  same  agents. 

We  do  not  see  evolution  working  in  one  day,  or  in 
a  century,  or  in  many  centuries.  Neither  do  we 
catch  the  gods  of  erosion  at  their  Herculean  tasks. 
They  always  seem  to  be  having  a  holiday,  or  else  to 
be  merely  toying  with  their  work. 

When  we  see  a  mound  of  earth  or  a  bank  of  clay 
worn  into  miniature  mountain-chains  and  canons 
and  gulches  by  the  rains  of  a  season,  we  do  not 

182 


SCIENTIFIC   FAITH 

doubt  our  eyes;  we  know  the  rains  did  it.  But  when 
we  see  the  same  thing  copied  in  a  broad  landscape, 
or  on  the  face  of  a  state  or  a  continent,  we  find  it 
hard  to  believe  the  evidence  of  our  own  senses.  The 
scale  upon  which  it  is  done,  and  the  time  involved, 
put  it  so  far  beyond  the  sphere  of  our  experience 
that  something  in  us,  probably  the  practical,  every- 
day man,  refuses  to  be  convinced. 

The  lay  mind  can  hardly  have  any  adequate  con- 
ception of  the  part  erosion,  the  simple  weathering 
of  the  rocks,  has  played  in  shaping  our  landscapes, 
and  in  preparing  the  earth  for  the  abode  of  man. 
The  changes  in  the  surface  of  the  land  in  one's  life- 
time, or  even  in  the  historic  period,  are  so  slight 
that  the  tales  the  geologists  tell  us  are  incredible. 

When,  during  a  recent  trip  through  the  great 
Southwest,  I  saw  the  earth  laid  open  by  erosion  as 
I  had  never  before  dreamed  of,  especially  when  I 
visited  those  halls  of  the  gods,  the  Grand  Canon 
and  Yosemite  Valley,  I  found  my  capacity  to  believe 
in  the  erosive  power  of  water  and  the  weather  quite 
overtaxed.  It  must  be  true,  I  said,  what  the  geol- 
ogists tell  us,  that  water  and  air  did  all  this;  but 
while  you  look  and  wait,  and  while  generations 
before  you  have  looked  and  waited,  all  is  as  quiet 
and  passive  as  if  the  slumber  of  ages  wrapped  hill 
and  vale.  Invisible  giants  have  wrought  and  delved 
here  of  whom  we  never  catch  a  glimpse,  nor  shall  we, 
wait  and  watch  we  never  so  long.  No  sound  of  their 

183 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

hammers  or  picks  or  shovels  or  of  the  dynamite  ever 
breaks  the  stillness  of  the  air. 

I  have  to  beheve  that  the  valleys  and  mountains 
of  my  native  Catskills  were  carved  out  of  a  great 
elevated  plain  or  plateau;  there  is  no  other  explan- 
ation of  them.  Here  lie  the  level  strata,  without  any 
bending  or  folding,  or  sign  of  convulsion  and  up- 
heavals, horizontal  as  the  surface  of  the  sea  or  lake 
in  which  their  sediments  were  originally  laid  down; 
and  here  are  these  deep,  wide  valleys  cut  down 
through  these  many  sheets  of  stratified  rock;  and 
here  are  these  long,  high,  broad-backed  mountains, 
made  up  of  the  rock  that  the  forces  of  air  and  water 
have  left,  and  with  no  forces  of  erosion  at  work 
that  would  appreciably  alter  a  Hne  of  the  landscape 
in  ten  thousand  years;  and  yet  we  know,  if  we  know 
anything  about  the  physical  history  of  the  earth, 
that  erosion  has  done  this  work,  carved  out  these 
mountains  and  valleys,  from  the  Devonian  strata, 
as  Uterally  as  the  sculptor  carves  his  statue  from  the 
block  of  marble. 

Above  my  lodge  on  the  home  farm  the  vast  lay- 
ers of  the  gray,  thin-sheeted  Catskill  rock  crop  out 
and  look  across  the  valley  to  their  fellows  two  or 
more  miles  away  where  they  crop  out  in  a  similar 
manner  on  the  opposite  slope  of  the  mountain. 
With  the  eye  of  faith  I  see  the  great  sheets  restored, 
and  follow  them  across  on  the  line  which  they  made 
seons  ago,  till  they  are  joined  again  to  their  fellows 

184 


SCIENTIFIC  FAITH 

as  they  were  before  the  agents  of  erosion  had  so 
widely  severed  them. 

These  physical  forces  have  worked  as  slowly  and 
silently  in  sculpturing  the  landscapes  as  the  biolo- 
gical laws  have  worked  in  evolving  man  from  the 
lower  animals,  or  the  vertebrates  from  the  inverte- 
brates. The  rains,  the  dews,  the  snows,  the  winds 
—  how  could  these  soft,  gently  careering  agents  have 
demolished  these  rocks  and  dug  these  valleys?  One 
would  almost  as  soon  expect  the  wings  and  feet  of 
the  birds  to  wear  away  the  forests  they  flit  through. 
The  wings  of  time  are  feathered  also,  and  as  they 
brush  against  the  granite  or  the  flinty  sandstone  no 
visible  particle  is  removed  while  you  watch  and 
wait.  Come  back  in  a  thousand  years,  and  you  note 
no  change,  save  in  the  covering  of  trees  and  verdure. 
Return  in  ten  thousand,  and  you  would  probably 
find  the  hills  carrying  their  heads  as  high  and  as 
proudly  as  ever.  Here  and  there  the  face  of  the  cliff 
may  have  given  way,  or  a  talus  slid  into  the  valley, 
or  a  stream  or  river  changed  its  course,  or  sawed 
deeper  into  the  rock,  and  a  lake  been  turned  into  a 
marsh,  or  the  delta  of  a  river  broadened  —  minor 
changes,  such  as  a  shingle  from  your  roof  or  a  brick 
from  your  chimney,  while  your  house  stands  as  be- 
fore. In  one  hundred  thousand  years  what  changes 
should  we  probably  find?  Here  in  the  Catskills, 
where  I  write,  the  weathering  of  the  hills  and  moun- 
tains would  probably  have  been  but  slight.  It  must 

185 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

be  fifty  thousand  years  or  more  since  the  great  ice- 
sheet  left  us.  Where  protected  by  a  thin  coat  of  soil, 
its  scratches  and  grooves  upon  the  surface  rock  are 
about  as  fresh  and  distinct  as  you  may  see  them 
made  in  Alaska  at  the  present  time.  Wliere  the 
rock  is  exposed,  they  have  weathered  out,  one  eighth 
of  an  inch  probably  having  been  worn  away.  The 
drifting  of  the  withered  leaves  of  autumn,  or  of  the 
snows  of  winter  over  them,  it  really  seems,  would 
have  done  as  much  in  that  stretch  of  time.  Then  try 
to  fancy  the  eternity  it  has  taken  the  subaerial  ele- 
ments to  cut  thousands  of  feet  through  this  hard 
Catskill  sandstone !  No,  the  evolution  of  the  land- 
scape, the  evolution  of  the  animal  and  vegetable 
kingdoms,  the  evolution  of  the  suns  and  planets, 
involve  a  process  so  slow,  and  on  such  a  scale,  that 
it  is  quite  unthinkable.  How  long  it  took  evolution 
to  bridge  the  chasm  between  the  vertebrate  and  the 
invertebrate,  between  the  fish  and  the  frog,  between 
the  frog  and  the  reptile,  between  the  reptile  and  the 
mammal,  or  between  the  lowest  mammal  and  the 
highest,  who  can  guess? 

But  the  gulf  has  been  passed,  and  here  we  are  in 
this  teeming  world  of  life  and  beauty,  with  a  terrible 
past  behind  us,  but  a  brighter  and  brighter  future 
before  us. 


"  THE  WORM  STRIVING  TO  BE  MAN  " 

WHEN  our  minds  have  expanded  sufficiently 
to  take  in  and  accept  the  theory  of  evo- 
lution, with  what  different  feelings  we  look  upon 
the  visible  universe  from  those  with  which  our  fa- 
thers looked  upon  it!  Evolution  makes  the  universe 
alive.  In  its  light  we  see  that  mysterious  potency 
of  matter  itself,  that  something  in  the  clod  under 
foot  that  justifies  Emerson's  audacious  line  of  the 
"worm  striving  to  be  man."  We  are  no  longer  the 
adopted  children  of  the  earth,  but  her  own  real  off- 
spring. Evolution  puts  astronomy  and  geology  in 
our  blood  and  authenticates  us  and  gives  us  the 
backing  of  the  whole  solar  system.  This  is  the  re- 
demption of  the  earth :  it  is  the  spiritualization  of 
matter. 

In  imagination  stand  off  in  vacant  space  and  see 
the  earth  rolling  by  you,  a  huge  bubble  with  all  its 
continents  and  seas  and  changing  seasons  and  count- 
less forms  of  life  upon  it,  and  remember  that  you  are 
looking  upon  a  great  cosmic  organism,  pulsing  with 
the  vital  currents  of  the  universe,  and  that  what 
it  holds  of  living  forms  were  not  arbitrarily  imposed 

187 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

upon  it  from  without,  but  vitally  evolved  from 
within  and  that  man  himself  is  one  of  its  products 
as  literally  as  are  the  trees  that  stand  rooted  to  the 
soil.  Revert  to  the  time  when  life  was  not,  when  the 
globe  was  a  half-incandescent  ball,  or  when  it  was  a 
seething,  weltering  waste  of  heated  water,  before 
the  land  had  yet  emerged  from  the  waves,  and  yet 
you  and  I  were  there  in  the  latent  potencies  of  the 
chemically  and  dynamically  warring  elements.  We 
were  there,  the  same  as  the  heat  and  flame  are  in  the 
coal  and  wood  and  as  the  explosive  force  of  powder 
is  in  the  grains.  The  creative  cosmic  chemistry  in 
due  time  brought  us  forth,  and  started  us  on  the  long 
road  that  led  from  the  amoeba  up  to  man.  There 
have  been  no  days  of  creation.  Creation  has  been  a 
continuous  process,  and  the  creator  has  been  this 
principle  of  evolution  inherent  in  all  matter. 

Man  himself  was  born  of  this  principle.  His 
genealogy  finally  runs  back  to  the  clod  under  his 
feet.  One  has  no  trouble  in  accepting  the  old  Bibli- 
cal account  of  his  origin  from  the  dust  of  the  earth 
when  one  views  that  dust  in  the  light  of  modem 

science. 

Man  is  undoubtedly  of  animal  origin.  He  is  em- 
braced in  the  same  zoological  scheme  as  are  all  other 
creatures,  and  did  not  start  as  man  any  more  than 
you  and  I  started  with  our  present  stature,  or  than 
the  earth  sprang  from  chaos  as  we  now  behold  it. 

His  complete  physical  evolution  must  have  been 

188 


THE  WORM  STRIVING  TO  BE   IVIAN 

achieved  thousands  of  centuries  ago,  but  his  full 
mental  and  spiritual  evolution  is  not  yet. 

I  think  of  his  physical  evolution  as  completed 
when  he  assumed  the  upright  attitude  or  passed 
from  a  quadruped  to  a  biped,  which  must  of  itself 
have  been  a  long,  slow  process.  Probably  our  whole 
historic  period  would  form  but  a  fraction  of  this 
cycle  of  unrecorded  time.  Man's  complete  emer- 
gence from  the  lower  orders,  so  that  he  stood  off  in 
sharp  contrast  to  them  in  his  physical  form  probably 
occurred  in  later  Tertiary  times,  and  what  the  mean- 
ing of  this  stretch  of  time  is  in  human  years  we  can 
only  conjecture.  During  this  cycle  of  numberless 
millenniums  till  the  dawn  of  history,  man's  develop- 
ment was  mainly  mental.  He  left  the  brute  crea- 
ture behind  because  his  mind  continued  to  develop 
after  his  physical  form  was  complete,  while  the  brute 
stood  still.  Whence  the  impulse  that  sent  man  for- 
ward .^^  Why  was  one  animal  form  endowed  with  the 
capacity  for  endless  growth  and  development,  and 
all  the  others  denied  it.^^  Ah!  that  is  the  question  of 
questions.  Compared  with  the  development  of  his 
bodily  powers,  man's  mental  and  spiritual  growth 
has  been  very  rapid.  He  seems  to  have  been  mil- 
lions of  years  in  getting  his  body,  while  he  has  been 
only  millenniums  in  getting  his  reason  and  intelli- 
gence. What  progress  since  the  dawn  of  history! 
Compare  the  Germans  of  the  time  of  Tacitus,  or  the 
Gauls  of  the  time  of  Caesar,  or  the  Britons  of  the 

189 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

time  of  Hadrian  with  the  people  of  those  countries 
to-day. 

We  are  prone  to  speak  of  man's  emergence  from 
the  lower  orders  as  if  it  were  a  simple  thing,  almost 
like  the  going  from  one  country  into  another.  But 
try  to  think  what  it  means;  try  to  think  of  the  slow 
transformation,  of  the  long,  toilsome  road  even 
from  the  halfway  house  of  our  simian  ancestors. 
If  we  do  not  give  him  the  benefit  of  the  sudden 
mutation  theory  of  the  origin  of  species,  then  think 
of  the  slow  process,  hair  by  hair,  as  it  were,  by  which 
a  tailed,  apelike  arboreal  animal  was  transformed 
into  a  hairless,  tailless,  erect,  tool-using,  fire-using, 
speech-forming  animal.  We  see  in  our  own  day  in 
the  case  of  the  African  negro,  that  centuries  of  our 
Northern  climate  have  hardly  any  appreciable  effect 
toward  making  a  white  man  of  him;  nor,  on  the  other 
hand,  has  exposure  to  the  tropical  sun  had  much 
more  effect  in  making  a  negro  of  the  white  man. 
Probably  it  would  take  ten  thousand  years  or  more 
of  these  conditions  to  bleach  the  pigments  out  of  the 
one  skin  and  put  them  in  the  other.  There  is  con- 
vincing proof  from  painting  and  figures  found  in 
Egypt  that  neither  the  African  negro  nor  the 
Egj^ptian  has  changed  in  features  in  five  thousand 
years. 

The  most  marvelous  thing  about  man's  evolu- 
tion is  the  inborn  upward  impulse  in  some  one  low 
organism  that  rested  not  till  it  reached  its  goal  in 

190 


THE  WORM  STRIVING  TO  BE   MAN 

him.  The  mollusk  remains,  but  some  impulse  went 
out  from  the  mollusk  that  begat  the  fish.  The  fish 
remains,  but  some  impulse  went  out  from  the  fish 
that  begat  the  amphibian.  The  amphibian  remains, 
but  some  impulse  went  out  from  the  amphibian  that 
begat  the  reptile.  The  reptile  remains,  but  some 
impulse  went  out  from  the  reptile  that  begat  the 
mammal ;  and  so  on  up  to  man.  Man  must  have  had 
a  specific  line  of  descent.  One  golden  thread  must 
connect  him  with  the  lowest  forms  of  life.  And  the 
wonder  is  that  this  golden  thread  was  never  snapped 
or  lost  through  all  the  terrible  vicissitudes  of  the  geo- 
logic ages.  But  I  suppose  it  is  just  as  great  a  wonder 
that  the  line  of  descent  of  the  horse,  or  the  sheep,  or 
the  dog,  or  the  bird,  was  not  snapped  or  lost.  Some 
impulse  or  tendency  was  latent  or  potential  in  the 
first  unicellular  life  that  rested  not  till  it  eventuated 
in  each  of  these  higher  forms.  Did  any  terrestrial  or 
celestial  calamity  endanger  the  line  of  descent  of 
any  of  the  higher  .creatures?  Was  any  form  cut  off 
in  the  world-wide  crustal  disturbances  of  the  earth 
at  the  end  of  palaeozoic  and  mesozoic  time,  when  so 
many  forms  of  animal  life  appear  to  have  been 
wiped  out,  that  might  in  time  have  given  birth  to  a 
kind  unlike  or  superior  to  any  now  upon  the  earth? 
Species  after  species  have  become  extinct,  whole 
orders  and  families  have  gone  out,  often  rather  sud- 
denly. Why  we  know  not.  Why  the  line  of  man's 
descent  was  not  cut  off,  who  knows?    It  is  a  vain 

191 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

speculation.  There  can  be  little  doubt  that  in  early 
Tertiary  times  our  ancestor  was  a  small,  feeble 
mammal,  maj^'be  of  the  lemur,  maybe  of  the  mar- 
supial kind,  powerless  before  the  great  carnivorous 
mammals  of  that  time,  and  probably  escaping  them 
by  his  greater  agility,  perhaps  by  his  arboreal  habits. 
The  ancestor  of  the  horse  was  also  a  small  creature 
at  that  time,  not  larger  than  a  fox.  It  was  not  cut 
off;  the  line  of  descent  seems  complete  to  the  horse 
of  our  day.  Small  beginnings  seem  to  be  the  rule  in 
all  provinces  of  life.  There  is  little  doubt  that  the 
great  animals  of  our  day  —  the  elephant,  the  whale, 
the  lion,  —  all  had  their  start  in  small  forms.  Many 
of  these  small  forms  have  been  found.  But  a  com- 
plete series  of  any  of  the  animal  forms  that  eventu- 
ated in  any  of  the  dominant  species  is  yet  wanting. 
It  is  quite  certain  that  the  huge,  the  gigantic,  the 
monstrous  in  animal,  as  in  vegetable  life,  lies  far  be- 
hind us.  Is  it  not  quite  certain  that  evolution  in  the 
life  of  the  globe  has  run  its  course,  and  that  it  will 
not  again  bring  forth  reptiles  or  mammals  of  the 
terrible  proportions  of  those  of  past  geologic  ages? 
nor  ferns,  nor  mosses,  nor  as  gigantic  trees  as  those 
of  Carboniferous  times?  Probably  the  redwoods  of 
the  Far  West,  the  gigantic  sequoias,  are  the  last  race 
of  gigantic  trees.  The  tide  of  life  of  the  globe  is  un- 
doubtedly at  the  full.  The  flood  has  no  doubt  been 
checked  many  times.  The  glacial  periods,  of  which 
there  seem  to  have  been  several  in  different  parts 

192 


THE  WORM  STRIVING  TO  BE  MAN 

of  the  earth,  and  in  different  geological  periods,  no 
doubt  checked  it  when  it  occurred.  But  the  tide  as  a 
whole  must  have  steadily  risen,  because  the  progres- 
sion from  lower  to  higher  forms  has  gone  steadily 
forward.  The  lower  forms  have  come  along;  Nature 
has  left  nothing  behind.  The  radiates,  the  articu- 
lates, the  mollusca,  are  still  with  us,  but  in  the 
midst  of  these  the  higher  and  higher  forms  have 
been  constantly  appearing.  The  great  biological 
tree  has  got  its  growth.  Many  branches  and  twigs 
have  died  and  dropped  off,  and  many  more  will  do 
so,  are  doing  so  before  our  eyes,  but  I  cannot  help 
doubting  that  any  new  branches  of  importance  are 
yet  to  appear  —  any  new  families  or  orders  of  birds, 
or  fishes,  or  reptiles,  or  mammals.  The  horse,  the 
stag,  the  sheep,  the  dog,  the  cat,  as  we  know  them, 
are  doubtless  the  end  of  the  series.  One  arrives  at 
this  conclusion  upon  general  principles.  Life  as  a 
whole  must  run  its  course  or  reach  its  high-water 
mark,  the  same  as  life  in  its  particular  phases.  Man 
has  arrived  and  has  universal  dominion;  all  things 
are  put  under  his  feet.  The  destiny  of  life  upon  the 
globe  is  henceforth  largely  in  his  hands.  Not  even 
he  can  avert  the  final  cosmic  catastrophe  which 
physicists  foresee,  and  which,  according  to  Pro- 
fessor Lowell,  the  beings  upon  Mars  are  now  strug- 
gling to  ward  off. 

Man  has  taken  his  chances  in  the  clash  of  forces 
of  the  physical  universe.   No  favor  has  been  shown 

193 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

him,  or  is  shown  him  to-day,  and  yet  he  has  come 
to  his  estate.  He  has  never  been  coddled;  fire,  water, 
frost,  gravity,  hunger,  death,  have  made  and  still 
make  no  exceptions  in  his  favor.  He  is  on  a  level 
with  all  other  animals  in  this  respect.  He  has  his  life 
and  well-being  on  the  same  terms  as  do  the  fowls  of 
the  air  and  the  beasts  of  the  fields. 

Archbishop  Whately  thought  that  primitive  man 
could  never  have  raised  himself  to  a  higher  con- 
dition without  external  aid  —  some  "elementary 
instruction  to  enable  his  faculties  to  begin  their 
work."  He  must  have  had  a  boost.  Well,  the  boost 
was  forthcoming,  but  it  was  not  from  without,  but 
from  within,  through  this  principle  of  development, 
this  upward  striving  that  was  innate  from  the  first 
in  certain  forms  of  life  and  of  which  Whately  had 
no  conception.  It  was  the  conception  of  his  time 
that  creation  was  like  a  watch  made  and  wound  up 
by  some  power  external  to  itself. 

The  physical  evolution  of  man,  as  I  have  said, 
is  no  doubt  complete.  He  will  never  have  wings,  or 
more  legs,  or  longer  arms,  or  a  bigger  brain.  The 
wings  and  the  extra  legs  and  the  keener  sense  he  has 
left  behind  him.  His  development  henceforth  must 
be  in  the  mental  and  spiritual.  He  is  bound  to  have 
more  and  more  dominion  over  Nature,  and  see  more 
and  more  clearly  his  own  relation  to  her.  He  will 
in  time  completely  subdue  and  possess  the  earth. 
Yes,  and  probably  exhaust  her.^   But  he  will  see  in 

194 


THE  WORM  STRIVING  TO  BE  MAN 

time  that  he  is  squandering  his  inheritance  and  will 
mend  his  ways.  He  will  conserve  in  the  future  as  he 
has  wasted  in  the  past.  He  will  learn  to  conserve 
his  own  health.  He  will  banish  disease;  he  will 
stamp  out  all  the  plagues  and  scourges,  through  his 
scientific  knowledge;  he  will  double  or  treble  the 
length  of  life.  Man  has  undoubtedly  passed  through 
and  finished  certain  phases  of  his  emotional  and 
mental  development.  He  will  never  again  be  the 
religious  enthusiast  and  fanatic  he  has  been  in  the 
past;  he  has  not  worshiped  his  last,  but  he  has 
worshiped  his  best.  He  will  build  no  more  cathe- 
drals; he  will  burn  no  more  martyrs  at  the  stake. 
His  religion  as  such  is  on  the  wane.  But  his  humani- 
tarianism  is  a  rising  tide.  He  is  becoming  less  and 
less  a  savage,  revolts  more  and  more  at  the  sight  of 
blood  and  suffering.  The  highly  religious  ages  were 
ages  of  blood  and  persecution.  Man's  tenderness  for 
man  has  vastly  increased.  The  sense  of  the  sacred- 
ness  of  human  life  has  increased  as  his  faith  in  his 
gods  has  declined.  He  has  grown  more  human  as  he 
has  grown  less  superstitious.  Science  has  atrophied 
his  faith,  but  it  has  softened  his  heart.  His  fear  of 
Nature  has  given  place  to  love.  Man  never  loved  as 
he  does  now.  He  has  withdrawn  his  gaze  from  hea- 
ven and  fixed  it  upon  the  earth.  As  his  interest  in 
other  worlds  has  diminished,  his  interest  in  this  has 
increased.  As  the  angels  have  departed,  the  child- 
ren have  come  in. 

195 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

When  the  nations,  too,  cease  to  be  savage  and 
selfish,  and  become  altruistic,  then  the  new  birth  of 
humanity  will  actually  have  occurred.  As  an  artist 
and  a  creator  of  beautiful  forms,  man  has  also  had 
his  day;  he  loved  the  beautiful,  the  artistic,  or  the 
ornamental  long  before  he  loved  the  true  and  the 
just.  He  was  proud  before  he  was  kind ;  he  was  chiv- 
alrous before  he  was  decent;  he  was  tattooed  before 
he  was  washed;  he  was  painted  before  he  was 
clothed;  he  built  temples  before  he  built  a  home; 
he  sacrificed  to  his  gods  before  he  helped  his  neigh- 
bor; he  was  heroic  before  he  was  self-denying;  he 
was  devout  before  he  was  charitable.  We  are  losing 
the  savage  virtues  and  vanities  and  growing  in  the 
grace  of  all  the  humanities,  and  this  process  will 
doubtless  go  on,  with  many  interruptions  and  set- 
backs of  course,  till  the  kingdom  of  love  is  at  last 
fairly  established  upon  the  earth. 


XI 

THE  PHANTOMS  BEHIND  US 


I  TAKE  the  title  of  this  paper  from  those  great 
hnes  in  Whitman  beginning  — 

"  Rise  after  rise  bow  the  phantoms  behind  me  "  — 

in  which  he  launches  in  vivid  imaginative  form 
the  whole  doctrine  of  evolution  some  years  before 
Darwin  had  published  his  epoch-making  work  on 
the  "Origin  of  Species." 

"  I  see  afar  down  the  huge  first  Nothing,  and  I  know  I  was  even 
there." 

I  do  not  know  that  Whitman  had  any  concrete 
belief  in  the  truth  of  the  animal  origin  of  man.  He 
read  as  picture  and  parable  that  which  the  man  of 
science  reads  as  demonstrable  fact.  He  saw  and  felt 
the  great  truth  of  evolution,  but  he  saw  it  as  written 
in  his  own  heart  and  not  in  the  great  stone  book  of 
the  earth,  and  he  saw  it  written  large.  He  felt  its 
cosmic  truth,  its  truth  in  relation  to  the  whole 
scheme  of  things;  he  felt  his  own  kinship  with  all 
that  lives,  and  had  a  vivid  personal  sense  of  his  debt 
to  the  past,  not  only  of  human  history,  but  also  to 
the  past  of  the  earth  and  the  spheres.  And  he  felt 
this  as  a  poet  and  not  as  a  man  of  science. 

197 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

The  theory  of  evolution  as  appHed  to  the  whole 
universe  and  its  inevitable  corollary,  the  animal 
origin  of  man,  is  now  well  established  in  most  of  the 
leading  minds  of  the  world,  but  it  is  still  rejected  by 
many  timid  and  sensitive  souls,  and  it  will  be  a  long 
time  before  it  becomes  universally  accepted. 

Doubtless  one  source  of  the  trouble  we  have  in 
accepting  the  theory  comes  from  the  fact  that  our 
minds  have  not  been  used  to  such  thoughts;  in  the 
mind  of  the  race  they  are  a  new  thing :  they  are  not 
in  the  literature  nor  in  the  philosophy  nor  in  the 
sacred  books  in  which  our  minds  have  been  nurtured; 
they  are  of  yesterday;  they  came  to  us  raw  and  un- 
hallowed by  the  usage  of  ages ;  more  than  that,  they 
savor  of  the  materialism  of  all  modern  science, 
which  is  so  distasteful  to  our  finer  ideals  and  religious 
sensibilities.  In  fact,  these  ideas  are  strangers  of  an 
alien  race  in  our  intellectual  household,  and  we  look 
upon  them  coldly  and  distrustfully.  But  probably 
to  our  children,  or  to  our  children's  children,  they  will 
wear  quite  a  different  countenance;  they  will  have 
become  an  accepted  part  of  the  great  family  of  ideas 
of  the  race. 

Another  hindrance  is  the  dullness  and  opacity  of 
our  own  minds.  We  are  slow  to  wake  up  to  a  sense 
of  the  divinity  that  hedges  us  about.  The  great 
oflBce  of  science  has  been  to  show  us  this  universe  as 
much  more  wonderful  and  divine  than  we  have  been 
wont  to  believe;  shot  through  and  through  with  celes- 

198 


THE  PHANTOMS  BEHIND  US 

tial  laws  and  forces;  matter,  indeed,  but  matter  in- 
formed with  spirit  and  intelligence;  the  creative 
energy  inherent  and  active  in  the  ground  underfoot 
not  less  than  in  the  stars  and  nebulae  overhead. 

We  look  for  the  divine  afar  off.  We  gaze  upon  the 
beauty  and  purity  of  the  heavenly  bodies  without 
thinking  that  we  are  also  in  the  heavens.  We  must 
open  our  minds  to  the  stupendous  fact  that  God  is 
immanent  in  his  universe  and  that  it  is  literally  and 
exactly  true,  as  we  were  taught  long  ago,  that,  during 
every  moment  of  our  lives,  in  Him  we  live  and  move 
and  have  our  being. 

Moreover,  we  are  staggered  by  the  element  of  vast 
time  that  is  implied  in  the  history  of  development. 
Were  it  not  for  the  records  in  the  rocks,  we  could  not 
believe  it  at  all.  All  the  grand  movements  and  pro- 
cesses of  nature  are  quite  beyond  our  ken.  In  the 
heavens  only  the  astronomer  with  his  prisms  and 
telescopes  traces  them;  only  the  geologist  and  palae- 
ontologist read  their  history  in  the  earth's  crust. 
The  soil  we  cultivate  was  once  solid  rock,  but  not 
in  one  lifetime,  not  in  many  lifetimes,  do  we  see  the 
transformation  of  the  rocks  into  soil.  Nations  may 
rise  and  fall,  and  the  rocks  they  looked  upon  and  the 
soil  they  tilled  remain  practically  unchanged.  Geo- 
logists talk  about  the  ancient  continents  that  have 
passed  away.  What  an  abyss  of  time  such  things 
open !  They  talk  about  the  birth  of  a  mountain  or 
the  decay  of  a  mountain  as  we  talk  of  the  birth 

199 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

and  death  of  a  man,  but  in  doing  so  they  reckon 
with  periods  of  time  for  which  we  have  no  standards 
of  measurement.  They  walk  and  talk  with  the 
Eternal.  To  us  the  mountains  seem  as  fixed  as  the 
stars.  But  the  stars,  too,  are  flitting.  Look  at  Orion 
some  millions  of  years  hence,  and  he  will  have  been 
torn  limb  from  limb.  The  combination  of  stars  that 
forms  that  striking  constellation  and  all  other  con- 
stellations is  temporary  as  the  grouping  of  the  clouds. 
The  rise  of  man  from  the  lower  orders  implies  a  scale 
of  time  almost  as  great.  It  is  unintelligible  to  us  be- 
cause it  belongs  to  a  category  of  facts  that  tran- 
scends our  experience  and  the  experience  of  the  race 
as  the  interstellar  spaces  transcend  our  earthly  meas- 
urements. 

We  now  gaze  upon  the  order  below  us  across  an 
impassable  gulf,  but  that  gulf  we  have  crossed  and 
without  any  supernatural  means  of  transportation. 
We  may  say  it  has  been  bridged  or  filled  with  the 
humble  ancestral  forms  that  carried  forward  the 
precious  evolutionary  impulse  of  the  vertebrate 
series  till  it  culminated  in  man.  All  vestiges  of  that 
living  bridge  are  now  gone,  and  the  legend  of  our 
crossing  seems  like  a  dream  or  a  miracle.  Biological 
evolution  has  gone  hand  in  hand  with  geological 
evolution,  and  both  are  on  a  scale  of  time  of  which 
our  hour-glass  of  the  centuries  gives  us  but  a  faint 
hint.  Our  notions  of  time  are  not  formed  on  the 
pattern  of  the  cosmic  processes,  or  the  geologic 

200 


THE   PHANTOMS   BEHIND  US 

processes,  or  the  evolutionary  processes;  they  are 
formed  on  the  pattern  of  our  own  brief  span  of  Hfe. 
In  a  few  cases  in  the  familiar  life  about  us  we  see  the 
evolutionary  process  abridged,  and  transformations 
like  those  of  unrecorded  time  take  place  before  our 
eyes,  as  when  the  tadpole  becomes  the  frog  or  the 
grub  becomes  the  butterfly.  These  rapid  changes 
are  analogous  to  those  which  in  the  depths  of  geo- 
logic time  have  evolved  the  bird  from  the  fish  or  the 
reptile,  or  the  seal  and  the  manatee  from  a  four- 
footed  land  animal.  Our  common  bluebird  has  long 
been  recognized  as  a  descendant  of  the  thrush  family ; 
this  origin  is  evident  in  the  speckled  breast  of  the 
young  birds  and  in  the  voices  of  the  mature  birds. 
I  have  heard  a  bluebird  with  an  unmistakable  thrush 
note.  The  transformation  has  doubtless  been  so 
slow  that  an  analogous  change  taking  place  in  any 
of  the  bird  forms  of  our  own  time  would  entirely 
escape  observation.  The  bluebird  may  have  been 
as  long  in  getting  his  blue  coat  as  man  has  been  in 
getting  his  upright  position. 

Looking  into  the  laws  and  processes  of  the  com- 
mon nature  about  us  for  clues  to  the  origin  of  man 
is  not  unlike  looking  into  the  records  of  the  phono- 
graph for  the  secret  of  the  music  which  that  won- 
derful instrument  voices  for  us.  Something,  some 
active  principle  or  agent,  has  to  invoke  the  music 
that  slumbers  or  is  latent  in  these  lines. 

In  like  manner  some  principle  or  force  that  we 

201 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

do  not  see  is  active  in  the  ground  underfoot  and  in 
the  forms  of  life  about  us  which  is  the  final  secret  of 
the  origin  of  man  and  of  all  other  creatures.  This 
something  is  the  evolutionary  impulse,  this  innate 
aspiration  of  living  matter  to  reach  higher  and 
higher  forms.  "Urge  and  urge,"  says  Whitman, 
"always  the  procreant  urge  of  the  world."  It  is  in 
Emerson's  worm  "striving  to  be  man."  This  "striv- 
ing" pervades  organic  nature.  Whence  its  origin 
science  does  not  assume  to  say.^ 

Then  the  difference  in  kind  between  the  mind  of 
man  and  that  of  the  lower  orders  makes  evolution 
a  doubly  hard  problem. 

Look  over  the  globe  and  see  what  a  gulf  separates 
man  from  all  other  creatures.  All  the  other  animals 
seem  akin  —  as  if  the  product  of  the  same  workman. 
Man,  in  contrast,  seems  like  an  introduction  from 
some  other  sphere  or  the  outcome  of  quite  other 
psychological  laws;  his  dominion  over  them  all  is 
so  complete  and  universal.  Without  their  special- 
ization of  structure  or  powers,  he  yet  masters  them 
all  and  uses  them;  without  their  powers  of  speed, 
he  yet  outstrips  them;  without  their  strength  of 
tusk  and  limb,  he  yet  subdues  them;  without  their 
inerrant  instinct,  he  yet  outwits  them;  without  their 
keenness  of  eye,  ear,  and  nose,  he  yet  wins  in  the 

^  This  passage  was  written  long  before  I  had  read  Bergson's 
Creative  Evolution,  as  were  several  others  of  the  same  import  in 
this  volume. 

202 


THE  PHANTOMS    BEHIND   US 

chase;  without  their  special  adaptation  to  environ- 
ment, he  survives  when  they  perish.  A  man  is 
marked  off  from  the  animals  below  him,  I  say,  as  if 
he  were  a  being  of  another  sphere.  He  looks  into 
their  eyes  and  they  into  his,  and  no  recognition 
passes ;  and  yet  we  have  to  believe  that  he  and  they 
are  fruit  of  the  same  biologic  tree  and  that  their 
stem  forms  unite  in  the  same  trunk  somewhere  in 
the  abyss  of  biologic  time. 

The  rise  of  man  from  the  lower  orders  taxes  our 
powers  of  belief  and  our  faith  in  the  divinity  that 
lurks  underfoot  far  more  than  did  the  special  crea- 
tion myth.  Creation  by  omnipotent  fiat  seems  easy 
when  you  have  the  omnipotent  being  to  begin  with, 
but  creation  through  evolution  is  a  kind  of  cosmic 
or  biologic  legerdemain  that  baffles  and  bewilders 
us.  It  so  far  transcends  all  our  earthly  knowledge 
and  experience  and  all  the  flights  of  our  philosophy 
that  we  stand  speechless  before  it.  It  opens  a  gulf 
that  the  imagination  cannot  clear;  it  opens  vistas 
from  which  we  instinctively  shrink;  it  opens  up 
abysms  of  time  in  which  our  whole  historic  period 
would  be  but  a  day ;  it  opens  up  a  world  of  struggle, 
delay,  waste,  failure  that  palls  the  imagination.  It 
challenges  our  faith  in  the  immanency  and  in  the 
ceaseless  activity  of  God  in  his  world;  it  brings  the 
creative  energy  down  from  its  celestial  abode  and 
clothes  it  with  the  flesh  and  blood  of  animal  life. 
It  may  chill  and  shock  us;  it  shows  us  that  we  are 

203 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

of  the  earth  earthy;  yea,  that  we  are  of  the  animal 
beastly;  it  presses  us  down  in  matter;  it  puts  out  the 
lights  to  which  we  have  so  long  turned  as  lighting 
our  origin;  the  words  "sacred,"  "divine,"  "holy," 
and  "celestial,"  as  applied  to  our  origin  and  devel- 
opment, we  have  no  longer  any  use  for,  nor  for  any 
words  or  ideas  that  set  us  apart  from  the  rest  of 
creation  —  above  it  in  our  origin  or  apart  from  it  in 
our  relations.  The  atmosphere  of  mystery  and  mir- 
acle and  sanctity  that  our  religious  training  has 
thrown  around  our  introduction  upon  this  planet 
and  around  our  relations  and  destiny  science  dispels. 
Our  language  and  many  of  our  ideas  and  habits  of 
thought  date  back  to  pre-scientific  times  —  when 
there  were  two  worlds,  the  heavenly  and  the  earthly, 
separated  by  a  gulf.  Now  we  know  that  the  two 
worlds  are  one,  that  they  are  inseparably  blended; 
that  the  celestial  and  the  terrestrial  are  under  the 
same  law;  that  we  can  never  be  any  more  in  the  hea- 
vens than  we  are  here  and  now,  nor  any  nearer  the 
final  sources  of  life  and  power;  that  the  divine  is 
underfoot  as  well  as  overhead;  that  we  are  part  and 
parcel  of  the  physical  universe,  and  take  our  chances 
in  the  cosmic  processes  the  same  as  the  rest,  and 
draw  upon  the  same  fund  of  animal  life  that  the 
other  creatures  do.  We  are  identified  with  the 
worm  underfoot  no  less  than  with  the  stars  over- 
head. We  are  not  degraded  by  such  a  thought,  but 
the  whole  of  creation  is  lifted  up.   Our  minds  and 

204 


THE   PHANTOMS  BEHIND   US 

bodies  are  not  less  divine,  but  all  things  are  more 
divine.  We  have  to  gird  up  our  loins  and  try  to 
summon  strength  to  see  this  tremendous  universe 
as  it  is,  alive  and  divine  to  the  last  particle  and  em- 
bosomed in  the  Infinite. 

n 

Evolution  is  not  the  final  explanation  of  the  uni- 
verse, but  it  is  probably  the  largest  generalization 
of  the  modern  mind.  Science  has  to  start  some- 
where, and  it  starts  with  the  universe  as  it  finds  it 
and  seeks  to  trace  secondary  or  proximate  causes; 
the  evolutionist  seeks  to  trace  the  footsteps  of  cre- 
ative energy  in  the  world  of  animal  life.  How  did 
God  make  man.^  Out  of  the  dust  of  the  earth,  says 
the  Bible  of  our  fathers.  The  evolutionist  teaches 
essentially  the  same  thing,  only  he  does  not  abridge 
the  process  as  the  catechism  has  abridged  it  for  us; 
he  would  fain  unfold  the  whole  long  road  that  man 
has  traveled  from  the  first  protozoic  cell  to  the  vast 
communities  of  cells  that  now  make  up  his  physical 
life.  He  would  show  how  man  has  risen  on  stepping- 
stones  of  his  dead  self.  These  stepping-stones  have 
been  the  animal  forms  below  him.  In  them  and 
through  them  something,  some  impulse,  some  force, 
has  mounted  and  mounted  through  all  the  enormous 
lapse  of  geologic  time.  In  imagination  we  see  the 
dim,  shadowy  man,  restless  and  struggling  in  a  vast 
number  of  earlier  forms.    He  has  struggled   up- 

205 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

ward  through  the  invertebrates,  through  the  fish, 
through  the  reptile,  through  the  lower  mammals, 
through  his  simian  ancestors  till  he  reaches  his  goal 
in  the  man  we  know. 

Darwin  was  not  the  author  of  the  theory  of  evolu- 
tion, but  he  made  the  theory  alive  and  real  to  the 
imagination.  He  showed  us  what  a  master  key  it  is 
for  unlocking  the  riddle  of  the  life  of  the  globe. 
He  launched  biological  science  upon  a  new  career 
and  made  it  worthy  of  its  place  in  the  great  trilogy 
of  sciences,  astronomy,  geology,  and  biology,  of 
which  Tennyson,  in  his  poem  "Parnassus,"  recog- 
nized only  the  first  two.  Had  Tennyson  written  his 
poem  in  our  day  he  would  undoubtedly  have  in- 
cluded biology  among  his  "terrible  Muses"  that 
tower  above  all  others,  eclipsing  the  glory  of  the 
great  poets.  Or  is  it  true  that  we  find  it  easier  to 
accept  the  theory  of  the  evolution  of  the  worlds  and 
suns  from  nebulous  matter  than  to  accept  the  theory 
of  the  evolution  of  man  from  the  maze  of  the  lower 
animal  forms?  It  is  less  personal  to  us.  The  astro- 
nomer has  the  advantage  of  the  biologist  in  one  im- 
portant respect :  he  can  show  us  in  the  heavens  now 
the  process  of  the  evolution  of  worlds  actually 
going  on,  but  the  biologist  cannot  show  us  the  trans- 
formation of  one  species  into  another  taking  place 
to-day.  We  can  sound  the  abysses  of  astronomic 
space  easier  than  we  can  sound  the  abysses  of  geo- 
logic time.    The  stars  and  the  nebulae  we  have 

206 


THE  PHANTOMS   BEHIND   US 

always  with  us,  but  where  are  the  myriad  earher 
forms  that  were  the  antecedents  of  the  present  animal 
life  of  the  globe?  True,  the  palaeontologist  finds  a 
more  or  less  disjointed  record  of  them  in  the  strati- 
fied rocks  and  sees  in  a  measure  the  course  evolu- 
tion has  taken,  but  he  does  not  actually  see  it  at 
work  as  does  the  astronomer.  More  than  that,  the 
forces  the  astronomer  deals  with  are  mechanical 
and  chemical,  but  the  biologist  deals  with  a  new 
force  called  life  that  often  reverses  or  defies  me- 
chanical and  chemical  forces,  but  which  is  yet  so 
identified  and  blended  with  them  that  we  cannot 
conceive  it  apart  from  them.  The  stomach  does  not 
digest  itself,  nor  gravity  hold  the  blood  in  the  lower 
extremities.  The  tree  lifts  up  its  weight  of  fluids 
and  solids  and  holds  aloft  its  fruit  and  foliage  in 
spite  of  gravity;  its  growing  roots  split  and  lift  the 
rocks;  mosses  and  lichens  disintegrate  granite;  vital 
energy  triumphs  over  chemical  and  mechanical 
energy. 

Biological  laws  are  much  more  subtle  and  diflScult 
to  trace  and  formulate  than  chemical  and  mechani- 
cal laws.  Hence  the  student  of  organic  evolution 
can  rarely  arrive  at  the  demonstrable  certainties  in 
this  field  that  he  can  in  the  sphere  of  chemistry  and 
mechanics.  It  is  very  doubtful  if  life  can  ever  be 
explained  in  terms  of  these  things.  Life  works 
through  chemical  combinations  and  affinities,  and 
yet  is  it  not  more  than  chemistry.'^    It  works  with 

207 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

and  through  mechanical  principles  and  forces,  and 
yet  it  is  evidently  more  than  mechanics.  It  is  mani- 
fested through  matter,  and  yet  no  analysis  of  matter 
can  reveal  its  secret.  It  comes  and  goes  while  mat- 
ter stays;  we  destroy  life,  but  cannot  destroy  mat- 
ter. It  is  as  fugitive  as  the  wind  which  fills  all  sails 
one  minute  and  is  gone  the  next.  It  avails  itself  of 
fluids  and  gases  and  the  laws  which  govern  them, 
but  fluids  and  gases  do  not  explain  it.  It  waits 
upon  the  rains  and  the  dews,  but  it  is  more  than 
they  are;  it  follows  in  the  footsteps  of  the  decay  and 
disintegration  of  the  inorganic,  and  yet  it  is  not  the 
gift  of  these  things;  it  transforms  the  face  of  the 
earth,  and  yet  the  earth  has  been  and  will  be  when 
it  was  not  and  when  it  will  not  be.  Through  his 
knowledge  and  his  science  man  performs  wonders 
every  day;  he  can  reduce  mountains  to  powder  and 
seas  to  dry  land,  but  he  cannot  create  or  start  de  novo 
the  least  throb  of  life.  At  least,  he  has  not  yet  done 
so.  With  all  his  vast  resources  of  mechanics  and 
chemistry,  and  his  insight  into  the  mechanism  of 
the  universe,  he  has  not  yet  made  the  least  particle 
of  inorganic  matter  thrill  with  the  mysterious  some- 
thing we  call  life. 

There  must  have  been  a  time  when  life  was  not 
upon  the  earth  and  there  must  again  come  a  time 
when  it  will  not  be.  It  has  probably  vanished  from 
the  moon  and  all  inferior  planets,  and  it  has  not 
yet  come  to  the  superior  planets,  except  maybe  to 

208 


THE   PHANTOMS   BEHIND  US 

Mars.  It  must  be  and  must  have  always  been  po- 
tential in  matter,  but  this  fact  leaves  the  mystery 
as  profound  as  ever. 

Yet  if  the  artificial  production  of  life  were  to 
happen  to-day  —  if  in  some  of  our  laboratories  liv- 
ing matter  were  produced  from  non-living,  should 
we  not  still  have  to  credit  the  event  to  some  mysteri- 
ous potency  residing  in  matter  itself.^  If  by  a  lucky 
stroke  man  were  to  evoke  the  organic  from  the  inor- 
ganic, be  assured  he  would  not  evoke  something 
from  nothing,  or  add  anything  to  the  latent  possi- 
bilities of  the  elements  with  which  he  works.  Does 
not  the  question  still  remain  who  or  what  made  this 
feat  possible  .f^  One  dare  affirm  that  man  cannot  cre- 
ate life  de  novo  any  more  than  he  can  create  matter. 
He  may  yet  evoke  life  as  he  evokes  the  spark  from 
the  flint  and  the  flame  from  the  match  or  as  he 
evokes  force  from  the  food  he  eats.  In  this  latter  case 
he  does  not  create  the  force;  he  liberates  it  through 
the  vital  forces  of  his  body.  The  spark  from  the  flint 
and  the  flame  from  the  match  were  called  forth  by  a 
mechanical  process,  but  the  process  was  set  going 
by  the  will  which  waits  upon  the  vital  process.  The 
body  with  all  its  many  functions  is  a  complicated 
system  of  mechanical  devices  and  chemical  pro- 
cesses, but  that  which  is  back  of  all  and  governs  all 
is  not  mechanical ;  the  body  is  a  machine  plus  some- 
thing else. 

The  chemist  or  biologist  who  shall  produce  a 

209 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

speck  of  protoplasm  to-day  will  have  the  credit  of 
unlocking  a  power  in  inorganic  nature;  he  will  prove 
by  a  short  cut  how  immanent  the  creative  energy 
or  the  vital  force  of  the  universe  is  in  matter.  He 
will  not  have  eliminated  the  creative  energy;  he  will 
only  have  disclosed  it  and  availed  himself  of  it. 

We  behold  spontaneous  combustion,  a  fire  self- 
kindled,  but  we  do  not  see  the  activity  of  the  par- 
ticles of  matter  that  preceded  it  or  penetrate  the 
secret  of  their  mysterious  affinities.  The  fire  was 
potential  there  in  the  very  constitution  of  the  ele- 
ments. We  flout  at  miracles,  and  then  we  disclose 
an  unending  miracle  in  the  life  about  us. 

All  the  life  upon  the  globe,  including  man  with  all 
his  marvelous  powers,  surely  originated  upon  the 
globe,  surely  arose  out  of  the  non-living  and  the  non- 
thinking, not  by  the  fiat  of  some  power  external  to 
nature,  but  through  the  creative  energy  inherent 
in  nature  and  ever  active  there.  The  great  physical 
instrumentality  was  heat  —  without  heat  the  reac- 
tion called  fife  could  never  have  taken  place.  This 
fact  has  led  a  French  biologist  to  say  that  life  is  only 
a  surface  accident  in  the  history  of  the  thermic 
evolution  of  the  globe.  Without  the  disintegration 
of  the  rocks  and  the  formation  of  the  soil  and  the 
precipitation  of  watery  vapor,  which  was  indirectly 
the  work  of  heat,  the  vegetable  and  the  animal  could 
not  have  developed.  If  we  succeed  in  proving  that 
all  these  things  are  of  chemico-mechanical  origin, 

210 


THE   PHANTOMS    BEHIND  US 

we  still  want  to  know  who  or  what  instituted  these 
chemical  and  mechanical  powers  and  the  laws  that 
govern  them.  Creation  by  chemistry  and  mechanics 
is  as  mysterious  as  creation  by  miracle.  We  must 
still  have  a  creator,  while  we  can  do  nothing  with 
him  nor  find  any  place  for  him  in  an  endless,  begin- 
ningless,  infinite  series  of  events.  So  there  we  are. 
We  go  out  of  the  same  door  by  which  we  came  in. 

When  all  life  vanishes  from  the  earth,  as  it  will 
when  the  condition  of  heat  and  moisture  has  radi- 
cally changed,  and  eternal  refrigeration  sets  in  — 
what  then?  The  potencies  of  matter  will  not  have 
changed  and  life  will  reappear  and  go  through  its 
cycle  again  on  some  other  sphere. 

Life  began  upon  this  earth  not  by  miracle  in  the 
old  sense,  but  by  miracle  in  the  new  scientific  sense 
—  by  the  immanence  and  ceaseless  activity  of  the 
creative  energy  in  the  physical  world  about  us  — 
in  the  sunbeam,  in  the  rains,  in  the  snows,  in  the  air 
currents,  and  in  the  soil  underfoot;  in  oxygen,  hy- 
drogen, carbon,  nitrogen,  in  lime,  iron,  silex,  phos- 
phorus, and  in  all  the  rest  of  them.  Each  has  its 
laws,  its  ways,  its  fixed  mode  of  procedure,  its 
affinities,  its  likes  and  dislikes,  and  life  is  bound  up 
with  all  of  them,  tif  we  hypothesize  the  ether  to 
explain  certain  phenomena,  why  should  we  not 
hypothesize  a  vital  force  to  account  for  other  mys- 
teries? 

The  inorganic  passes  into  the  organic  as  night 

211 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

passes  into  day.  Where  does  one  end  and  the  other 
begin?  No  man  can  tell.  There  is  no  beginning  and 
no  ending  of  either,  and  yet  night  comes  and  goes 
and  day  comes  and  goes  —  a  constant  becoming  and 
a  constant  ending.  We  are  probably  in  the  midday 
of  the  life  of  the  globe  —  life  huge  and  rank  and 
riotous  —  the  youth  of  life  has  passed,  life  more  se- 
date and  aspiring  and  spiritual  has  come.  The  gi- 
gantic has  gone  or  is  going,  the  huge  monsters  of  the 
sea  and  of  the  land  have  had  their  day,  man  appears 
at  the  end  of  the  series  of  lesser  but  more  complete 

forms. 

Ill 

Many  intelligent  persons  who  have  been  rocked 
in  the  cradle  of  the  old  creeds  still  look  upon  evolu- 
tion as  a  godless  doctrine  and  accuse  it  of  vulgariz- 
ing high  and  sacred  things.  This  state  of  mind  can 
only  be  slowly  outgrown  by  familiarizing  ourselves 
with  the  processes  of  nature  or  of  the  creative  en- 
ergy in  the  world  of  life  and  matter  about  us;  with 
our  own  origin  in  the  low  fishlike  or  apelike  creature 
in  the  maternal  womb;  with  the  development  of 
every  plant,  tree,  and  animal  from  a  microscopic 
germ;  with  the  unbroken  sequence  of  natural  law; 
with  the  waste,  the  delays,  the  pains,  the  failures 
on  every  hand;  with  the  impersonal  and  the  impar- 
tial character  of  all  the  physical  forces;  with  the 
transformations  and  metamorphoses  that  marked 
the  course  of  animal  life;  and,  above  all,  with  the 

212 


THE   PHANTOMS   BEHIND  US 

thought  that  evolution  is  not  self -caused  or  in  any 
true  sense  a  cause  in  itself,  but  the  instrument  or 
plan  of  the  power  that  works  in  and  through  all 
things.  The  ways  of  God  in  all  these  details  are 
past  finding  out,  but  science  watches  the  unfolding 
of  a  bud,  the  development  of  a  grain  of  wheat,  the 
growth  of  the  human  embryo,  the  succession  of  life- 
forms  upon  the  globe  as  revealed  in  the  records  of 
the  stratified  rocks,  or  observes  in  the  heavens  the 
condensation  of  nebulous  matter  into  suns  and 
systems,  and  it  says  this  is  one  of  his  ways.  Evo- 
lution —  an  endless  unfolding  and  transformation. 
"Urge  and  urge  and  urge,"  says  Whitman  (I  love 
to  repeat  this  saying;  it  is  so  significant),  "always 
the  procreant  urge  of  the  world."  Always  the  labor 
and  travail  pains  of  the  universe  to  bring  forth 
higher  forms;  always  struggle  and  pain  and  failure 
and  death,  but  always  a  new  birth  and  an  upward 
reach. 

Strike  out  the  element  of  time  and  we  see  evolu- 
tion as  the  great  prestidigitator  of  the  biologic  ages. 
The  creative  energy  manipulates  a  fish  and  it  turns 
into  a  reptile;  it  covers  a  mollusk  as  with  a  vapor 
and  behold,  a  backboned  creature  instead!  Now 
we  see  a  little  creature  no  larger  than  a  fox  and 
when  we  look  again,  behold  the  horse;  a  wolf  or 
some  kindred  animal  is  plunged  into  the  water,  and 
behold,  the  seal !  Some  small  creature  of  the  lemur 
kind  is  covered  with  a  capacious  hand,  and  we  look 

213 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

again,  and  behold  man!  We  have  only  to  minimize 
time  and  minimize  space  to  see  the  impossible  hap- 
pening all  about  us  or  to  see  the  Mosaic  account  of 
creation  repeated;  we  have  only  the  clay  and  water 
to  begin  with,  when,  presto!  behold  what  we  have 
now!  We  see  the  rocks  covered  with  verdure,  the 
mountains  vanishing  into  plains,  the  valleys  chang- 
ing into  hills  or  the  plains  changing  into  moun- 
tains, tropic  lands  covered  with  ice  and  snow. 

Lord  Salisbury  thought  he  had  discredited  natu- 
ral selection,  which  is  one  of  the  feet  upon  which 
evolution  goes,  when  he  charged  that  no  one  had 
ever  seen  it  at  work.  We  have  not  seen  it  at  work 
because  our  little  span  of  life  is  too  short.  Only  the 
palaeontologist  traces  in  the  records  of  the  rocks  the 
footsteps  of  this  god  of  change.  And  rarely  if  ever 
does  he  find  a  continuous  and  complete  record  — 
only  a  footprint  here  and  there,  but  he  sees  the 
direction  in  which  they  are  going  and  many  of  the 
places  where  the  traveler  tarried.  The  palseontolo- 
gist,  that  detective  of  the  rocks,  works  up  his  case 
with  the  same  thoroughness  and  caution  and  the 
same  power  of  observation  as  does  the  detective  in 
human  affairs  and  with  a  greater  sweep  of  scientific 
imagination. 

An  agent  of  evolution  is  the  influence  of  the  en- 
vironment, but  who  sees  the  environment  set  its 
stamp  upon  animal  life.^  After  many  generations  we 
may  see  the  accumulated  results.    In  a  few  in- 

214 


THE   PHANTOMS   BEHIND  US 

stances  the  results  are  rapid.  Thus  sheep  lose  their 
wool  in  tropical  climates  and  a  northern  fur-bear- 
ing animal  its  fur.  The  well-being  of  the  animal  de- 
mands this  change,  and  demands  it  quickly.  Fish 
lose  their  sense  of  sight  in  underground  streams; 
this  loss  is  not  so  vital  and  it  comes  about  much 
more  slowly.  A  tropical  climate  sets  its  stamp  upon 
the  complexion  and  character  of  man,  but  this 
again  is  a  slow  process,  as  the  same  stress  of  neces- 
sity does  not  exist. 

In  the  tendency  to  variation  —  in  form,  size,  dis- 
position, power,  fertility  —  man  differs  from  all 
other  animals.  In  the  same  race,  in  the  same  fam- 
ily, we  find  infinitely  varied  types.  Among  the  wild 
creatures  all  the  individuals  of  a  species  are  prac- 
tically alike.  We  can  hardly  tell  one  fox,  or  one 
marmot,  or  one  chipmunk,  or  one  crow,  or  one 
hawk,  or  one  black  duck  from  another  of  the  same 
species.  Of  course  there  are  slight  individual  differ- 
ences, but  they  are  hardly  distinguishable.  Among 
the  insects,  one  bee,  one  beetle,  one  ant,  one  butter- 
fly seems  the  exact  copy  of  every  other  individual 
of  its  kind.  The  law  of  variation  seems  practically 
annulled  in  the  insect  world. 

It  is  the  wide  and  free  range  of  this  law  in  the 
human  species  that  has  undoubtedly  led  to  the 
great  progress  of  the  race.  There  has  been  no  dead 
level  —  no  democracy  of  talent  —  no  equality  of 
gifts,  but  only  equality  of  opportunity.    Men  differ 

215 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

from  one  another  in  their  mental  endowments,  capa- 
cities, and  dispositions  vastly  more    than  do  any 
other   creatures    upon   the  earth.   This  difference 
makes   man's   chances   of  progress   so   much   the 
greater;  he  has  so  many  more  stakes  in  the  game. 
If  one  type  of  talent  fails,  another  type  may  win; 
if  the  lymphatic  temperament  is  not  a  success,  try 
the  sanguine  or  the  bilious;  blue  eyes  and  black  eyes 
and  brown  eyes  will  win  more  triumphs  than  blue 
or  black  or  brown  alone.    Arms  or  legs  extra  long, 
sight  or  hearing  extra  sharp,  wit  extra  keen,  judg- 
ment extra  sure  —  all  these  things  open  doors  to 
more  progress.    Variation  gives  natural  selection  a 
chance  to  take  hold,  and  where  the  struggle  for  life 
is  the  most  severe  the  changes  will  be  the  most  rapid 
and  the  most  radical.    Without  the  pressure  of  the 
environment  natural   selection  would  not  select. 
The  tendency  to  physical  variation  in  man  is  prob- 
ably no  greater  than  in  other  creatures,  but  his 
tendency  to  mental   variation   is  enormous.     He 
varies  daily  from  mediocrity  to  genius,  hence  the 
enormous  range  of  his  chances  of  progress.    From 
the  first  variation  that  started  him  on  his  way  in 
his  line  of  descent,  variation  must  have  been  more 
and  more  active  till  he  varied  in  the  direction  of 
reason,  long  before  the  dawn  of  history,  since  which 
time  his  progress  has  been  by  rapid  strides  —  and 
more  and  more  rapid  till  we  see  his  leaps  forward  in 
recent  times.    The  race  owes  its  rapid  progress  to 

^16 


THE   PHANTOMS   BEHIND  US 

its  exceptional  men,  its  men  of  genius  and  power, 
and  these  have  often  been  Hke  sports  or  the  sudden 
result  of  mutations  —  a  man  like  Lincoln  springing 
from  the  humblest  parentage.  No  such  extreme 
variations  are  seen  in  any  of  the  lower  orders.  In- 
deed, in  one's  lifetime  one  sees  but  very  slight  varia- 
tion in  any  of  the  wild  or  domestic  creatures,  less 
in  the  wild  than  in  the  domestic  because  they  are 
less  under  the  injfluence  of  that  most  variable  of  ani- 
mals, man.  And  man's  variations  are  mainly  men- 
tal and  not  physical.  The  higher  we  go  in  the  scale 
of  powers,  the  greater  the  variation  and  hence  the 
more  rapid  the  evolution.  Probably  man's  body  has 
not  changed  radically  in  vast  cycles  of  time,  but 
his  mind  has  developed  enormously  since  the  dawn 
of  history. 

IV 

Biologists  are  coming  more  and  more  to  recognize 
some  unknown  factor  in  evolution,  probably  some 
unknowable  factor.  The  four  factors  of  Osborn  — 
heredity,  ontogeny,  environment,  selection  —  play 
upon  and  modify  endlessly  the  new  form  when  it  is 
started,  but  what  about  the  original  start?  Whence 
comes  this  inborn  momentum,  this  evolutionary 
send-off?  What  or  who  set  the  whole  grand  process 
going? 

Bergson  sees  an  internal  psychological  principle 
of  development,  hence  the  name  of  his  book,  **  Crea- 
tive Evolution."  Osborn  uses  the  word  *' directed." 

217 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

Certain  characters,  he  says,  are  adaptive  or  suited 
to  their  purpose  from  the  start;  they  do  not  have 
to  be  fitted  to  their  place  by  natural  selection. 
Huxley  uses  the  word  "predestined"  —  all  the  life 
of  the  globe  and  all  the  starry  hosts  of  heaven  are 
working  out  in  boundless  space  and  in  endless  time 
"their  predestined  course  of  evolution."  Darwin 
must  have  had  in  mind  the  same  mysterious  some- 
thing when  he  said  that  man  had  risen  to  the  very 
summit  of  the  animal  scale,  but  not  through  his  own 
exertions.  Not  by  his  own  will  or  exertion,  surely, 
any  more  than  the  embryo  in  its  mother's  womb 
develops  into  the  full-grown  child  by  its  own  exer- 
tion or  than  our  temperaments  and  complexions 
and  statures  are  matters  of  our  own  wills  and  choice. 
Something  greater  than  man  and  before  him,  to 
which  he  sustains  the  relation  that  the  unborn  child 
sustains  to  its  mother,  must  enter  into  our  thought 
of  his  origin  and  development. 

The  great  evolutionists  have  been  very  cautious 
about  seeking  to  go  behind  evolution  and  name  the 
Primal  Cause.  In  such  an  attempt  science  would  at 
once  be  beyond  soundings.  Darwin  and  Huxley 
were  reverent,  truth-loving  men,  but  they  hesitated 
as  men  of  science  to  put  themselves  in  a  position 
where  no  step  could  be  taken. 

Slowly  man  emerges  out  of  the  abyss  of  geologic 
time  into  the  dawn  of  history,  and  science  gropes 
about  like  a  man  feeling  his  way  in  the  dark  or,  at 

218 


THE  PHANTOMS   BEHIND  US 

most,  by  the  aid  now  and  then  of  a  dim  flash  of 
hght,  to  trace  the  path  he  has  come.  He  has  surely 
arrived,  and  we  are,  I  beheve,  safe  in  saying  he  has 
come  by  the  way  of  the  lower  orders;  but  the  precise 
forms  through  which  he  has  come,  the  houses  in 
which  he  has  tarried  by  the  way,  and  all  the  adven- 
tures and  vicissitudes  that  befell  him  on  the  journey 
—  can  we  ever  hope  to  know  these  things?  In  any 
case,  man  has  his  antecedents;  life  has  its  anteced- 
ents; every  beat  of  one's  heart  has  its  antecedent 
cause,  which  again  has  its  antecedent.  We  can  thus 
traverse  the  chain  of  causation  only  to  find  it  is  an 
endless  chain;  the  separate  links  we  can  examine, 
but  the  first  link  or  the  last  we  see,  by  the  very  na- 
ture of  things,  and  the  laws  of  our  own  minds,  must 
forever  elude  us.  Science  cannot  admit  of  a  break 
in  the  chain  of  causation,  cannot  admit  that  miracles 
or  the  supernatural  in  the  old  sense,  as  external  and 
arbitrary  interference  with  the  natural  order,  can 
play  or  ever  have  played  any  part  in  this  universe. 
Yet  science  has  to  postulate  a  First  Cause  when  it 
knows,  or  metaphysics  knows  for  it,  that  with  the 
Infinite  there  can  be  no  first  and  no  last,  no  begin- 
ning and  no  ending,  only  endless  succession. 

To  science  man  is  not  a  fallen  creature,  but  a 
many  times  risen  creature  and  all  the  good  of  the 
universe  centres  in  him.  The  mind  that  pervades 
all  nature  and  is  active  in  plant  and  animal  alike 
first  comes  to  know  itself  and  regard  itself  and 

£19 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

achieve  intellectual  appreciation  in  man.  While 
all  nature  below  man  is  wise  only  to  its  own  ends 
and  goes  its  appointed  way  as  void  of  self -conscious- 
ness as  the  stone  that  falls  or  the  wind  that  blows, 
the  mind  of  man  attains  to  disinterested  wisdom 
and  turns  upon  itself  and  upon  the  universe  the 
power  of  objective  thought;  it  alone  achieves  un- 
derstanding. 

In  our  studies  of  life  and  of  the  universe  as  soon 
as  we  begin  to  bridge  chasms  by  an  appeal  to  the 
miraculous,  or  to  the  extra-natural  powers,  we  are 
traitors  to  the  scientific  spirit  which  we  seek  to  serve. 
There  are  many  things  that  science  cannot  explain. 
Perhaps  I  may  say  that  it  cannot  give  the  ultimate 
explanation  of  anything.  It  can  do  little  more  than 
tell  us  of  the  action,  the  interaction,  and  the  reac- 
tion of  things,  but  of  the  things  themselves,  their 
origin  and  ultimate  nature,  or  the  source  of  the  laws 
that  govern  them,  what  does  it  or  what  can  it  know? 

Man  is  the  heir  of  all  the  geologic  ages ;  he  inherits 
the  earth  after  countless  generations  of  animals  and 
plants,  and  the  beneficent  forces  of  wind  and  rain, 
air  and  sky,  have  in  the  course  of  millions  of  years 
prepared  it  for  him.  His  body  has  been  built  for 
him  through  the  lives  and  struggles  of  the  countless 
beings  who  are  in  the  line  of  his  long  descent;  his 
mind  is  equally  an  accumulated  inheritance  of  the 
mental  growth  of  the  myriads  of  thinking  men  and 
unthinking  animals  that  went  before  him.    In  the 

220 


THE   PHANTOMS   BEHIND  US 

forms  of  his  humbler  forebears  he  has  himself  lived 
and  died  myriads  of  times  to  make  ready  the  soil 
that  nurses  and  sustains  him  to-day.  He  is  a  debtor 
to  Cambrian  and  Silurian  times,  to  the  dragons  and 
saurians  and  mastodons  that  have  roamed  over  the 
earth.  Indeed,  what  is  there  or  has  there  been  in 
the  universe  that  he  is  not  indebted  to?  The  remot- 
est star  that  shines  has  sent  a  ray  that  has  entered 
into  his  life.  All  things  are  under  his  feet,  and  the 
keys  of  the  heavens  are  in  his  hands. 


One  would  fain  arrive  at  some  concrete  belief  or 
image  of  his  line  of  descent  in  geologic  time  as  he 
does  in  the  historic  period.  But  how  hard  it  is  to  do 
so!  Can  we  form  any  mental  picture  of  the  actual 
animal  forms  that  the  manward  impulse  has  trav- 
eled through?  With  all  the  light  that  palaeontology 
throws  upon  the  animal  life  of  the  past,  can  we  see 
where  amid  the  revel  of  these  bizarre  forms  our  an- 
cestor hid  himself?  Can  we  see  him  as  a  reptile 
in  the  slime  of  the  jungle  or  in  the  waters  of  the 
Mesozoic  world?  What  was  he  like  or  what  akin 
to?  What  mark  or  sign  was  there  upon  him  at  that 
time  of  the  future  that  was  before  him?  Can  we  see 
him  as  a  fish  in  the  old  Devonian  seas  or  lakes?  Was 
he  a  big  fish  or  a  little  fish?  The  primitive  fishes 
were  mostly  of  the  shark  kind.  Is  there  any  con- 
nection between  that  fact  and  the  human  sharks  of 

221 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

to-day?  Much  less  can  one  picture  to  one's  self 
what  his  ancestor  was  like  in  the  age  of  the  inverte- 
brates, amid  the  trilobites,  etc.,  of  the  earlier  Palaeo- 
zoic seas.  But  we  must  go  back  even  earlier  than 
that,  back  to  unicellular  life  and  to  original  proto- 
plasm, and  finally  back  to  fiery  nebulous  matter. 
What  can  we  make  of  it  all  by  way  of  concrete 
conception  of  what  actually  took  place  —  of  the 
visible,  eating,  warring,  breeding  animal  forms  in 
whose  safekeeping  our  heritage  lay?  Nothing.  We 
are  not  merely  at  sea,  we  are  in  abysmal  depths, 
and  the  darkness  is  so  thick  we  can  cut  it. 

We  meet  the  same  difficulty  when  we  try  to  figure 
to  ourselves  the  line  of  descent  of  any  of  the  animal 
forms  of  to-day.  How  did  they  escape  the  world- 
wild  catastrophe  of  earlier  geologic  times?  Or  did 
the  creative  impulse  bank  upon  life  as  a  whole  and 
never  become  bankrupt,  no  matter  what  special 
lines  or  forms  failed? 

The  first  appearance  of  the  primates  is  in  Eocene 
times  and  the  anthropoid  apes  in  the  Miocene, 
probably  five  millions  of  years  ago.  The  form  which 
may  have  been  in  our  line  of  descent,  the  Dryopithe- 
cuSy  later  appears  to  have  become  extinct.  Did  our 
fate  hang  upon  the  success  of  any  of  these  forms? 
The  monkeys  and  anthropoid  apes  appeared  at  the 
same  time  in  different  countries.  Nature  seems  to 
have  been  making  preliminary  studies  of  man  in 
these  various  forms,  but  when  and  where  she  hit 

222 


THE   PHANTOMS   BEHIND   US 

upon  the  form  that  she  perfected  in  man,  who 
knows  ? 

The  horse  appears  to  have  been  evolved  in  North 
America,  true  cattle  in  Asia,  elephants  in  Africa. 
Can  we  narrow  their  line  of  descent  down  to  a  single 
pair  for  each?  Many  forms  allied  to  the  horse  ap- 
peared in  Europe  and  Asia  in  Miocene  times.  We 
find  monkeys  in  different  parts  of  the  world  in  the 
same  geologic  horizons;  did  they  all  have  a  com- 
mon origin? 

Life's  apprenticeship  has  been  a  long  one.  The 
earlier  forms  of  vertebrate  life  were  very  large;  later 
they  became  very  small.  Nature  seems  to  have  ex- 
perimented with  bulk,  as  if  she  thought  size  w^ould 
win  in  the  race.  Hence  those  huge  uncouth  forms 
among  the  reptiles  and  early  mammals.  The  scheme 
did  not  work  well;  bulk  was  not  the  thing,  after  all. 
Most  of  the  gigantic  forms  became  extinct.  Then 
she  tried  smaller  and  more  agile  forms  with  larger 
brains  —  less  flesh  and  more  wit.  On  this  line  Na- 
ture continued  to  work  tiU  she  produced  her  mas- 
terpiece in  man  —  a  rather  feeble  and  nearly  wea- 
ponless animal,  but  with  an  intangible  armory  of 
weapons  and  tools  in  his  brain  that  enables  him 
to  put  all  creatures  under  his  feet. 


XII 
THE  HAZARDS  OF  THE  PAST 


BERGSON,  the  new  French  philosopher,  thinks 
we  all  had  a  narrow  escape,  back  in  geologic 
time,  of  having  our  eggs  spoiled  before  they  were 
hatched,  or,  rather,  rendered  incapable  of  hatching 
by  too  thick  a  shell.  This  was  owing  to  the  voracity 
of  the  early  organisms.  As  they  became  more  and 
more  mobile,  they  began  to  take  on  thick  armors 
and  breastplates  and  shells  and  calcareous  skins  to 
protect  themselves  from  one  another.  This  tend- 
ency resulted,  he  thinks,  in  the  arrest  of  the  en- 
tire animal  world  in  its  evolution  toward  higher 
and  higher  forms.  These  shells  and  armors  begat 
a  kind  of  torpor  and  immobility  which  has  con- 
tinued down  to  our  day  with  the  echinoderms 
and  mollusks,  but  the  arthropods  and  vertebrates 
escaped  it  by  some  lucky  stroke.  Now  you  and 
I  are  here  without  imprisoning  shells  on  our 
backs;  but  how  or  why  did  we  escape.'^  Bergson  does 
not  say.  Was  it  a  matter  of  luck  or  chance?  Was 
there  ever  a  time  when  the  stream  of  life  tended  to 
harden  and  become  fixed  in  its  own  forms  like  a 
stream  of  cooling  lava,  or  has  the  innate  plasticity 

225 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

of  life  been  easily  equal  to  its  own  ends?  True,  the 
clam  remains  a  clam,  and  the  starfish  remains  a 
starfish;  some  other  forms  have  carried  the  evo- 
lutionary impulse  forward  till  it  fiowered  in  man. 
Was  this  impulse  ever  really  checked  or  endan- 
gered? Was  the  golden  secret  ever  intrusted  to 
the  keeping  of  any  single  form?  and,  had  that  form 
been  cut  off,  would  the  earth  have  been  still  with- 
out its  man?    These  are  puzzling  questions. 

Thus,  when  we  have  come  to  look  upon  life  and 
nature  in  the  light  of  evolution,  what  vistas  are 
opened  to  us  where  before  were  only  blank  walls! 
The  geologic  ages  take  on  a  new  interest  to  us.  We 
know  that  in  some  form  we  were  even  there.  The 
systems  of  sedimentary  rocks  which  the  geologist 
portrays,  piled  one  upon  the  other  to  a  depth  of 
fifty  miles  or  more,  seem  like  the  stairway  by  which 
we  have  ascended,  taking  on  some  new  and  more 
developed  form  at  each  rise.  What  we  were  at  the 
first  step  in  Cambrian  times  only  the  Lord  knows, 
but  whatever  we  were,  we  crept  up  or  floated  up 
to  the  next  rise.  In  the  Silurian  seas  we  may  have 
been  a  trilobite  for  aught  we  know;  at  any  rate,  we 
were  the  outcome  of  the  life  impulse  that  begat  the 
trilobites,  but  our  fate  was  not  bound  up  with  theirs, 
as  their  race  came  to  an  end  in  those  early  geologic 
ages,  and  our  stem  form  did  not.  Whether  or  not 
we  were  a  fish  in  the  Devonian  seas,  there  is  little 
doubt  that  we  had  gills,  because  we  have  the  gilU 

226 


THE  HAZARDS  OF  THE  PAST 

slits  yet  in  our  early  foetal  life,  and  it  is  quite  certain 
that  in  some  way  we  owe  our  backbones  to  the  fishes. 

When  the  rocks  that  form  my  native  Catskills 
were  being  laid  down  in  the  Devonian  waters,  I 
fancy  that  my  aquatic  embryo  was  swimming  about 
somewhere  and  slowly  waxing  strong.  Up  and  uj)  I 
climbed  across  the  sandstone  steps,  across  the  lime- 
stone, the  conglomerate,  the  slate,  up  into  Carbon- 
iferous times.  The  upper  and  nether  millstones  of  the 
"  millstone  grit"  did  not  crush  me,  neither  did  the 
floods  and  the  convulsions  of  Carboniferous  times 
that  buried  the  vast  vegetable  growths  that  re- 
sulted in  our  coal  measures  engulf  or  destroy  me. 
About  that  time  probably,  I  emerged  from  the  water 
and  became  an  amphibian,  and  maybe  got  my  five 
fingers  and  five  toes  on  each  side. 

Nor  did  the  wholesale  destruction  of  animal  life 
at  the  end  of  Palaeozoic  time  cut  off  my  line  of  de- 
scent. The  monstrous  reptiles  of  the  succeeding  or 
Mesozoic  age,  the  petrified  remains  of  one  of  which 
was  recently  found  in  the  sandstone  rocks  near  the 
river's  edge  under  the  Palisades  of  the  Hudson,  do 
not  seem  to  have  endangered  the  golden  thread  by 
which  our  fate  hung.  Still  '*I  mount  and  mount." 
The  stairs  by  which  I  climb  were  rent  by  earth- 
quakes and  volcanoes,  the  strata  were  squeezed  up 
and  overturned  and  folded  in  the  great  mountain- 
chains;  the  Alps,  the  Andes,  the  Himalayas,  the 
Coast  Range  were  born;  the  earth- throes  must  have 

227 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

been  tremendous  at  times;  yet  I  escaped  it  all. 
The  huge  and  fearful  mammals  of  the  third  or  Ter- 
tiary period  passed  me  by  unharmed.  Eruptions 
and  cataclysms,  the  sinking  of  the  land,  the  inun- 
dations of  the  sea,  world-wide  deformations  of  the 
earth's  crust,  fire  and  ice  and  floods,  monsters  of  the 
deep  and  dragons  of  the  land  and  the  air  have  beset 
my  course  from  the  first,  and  yet  here  I  am,  here  we 
all  are,  and  apparently  none  the  worse  for  the  ap- 
palling dangers  we  have  passed  through. 

Evolution  thus  makes  the  world  over  for  us.  It 
shows  us  in  what  a  complex  web  of  vital  and  far- 
reaching  relations  we  stand.  It  gives  us  an  outlook 
upon  the  past  that  is  startling,  and  in  some  ways 
forbidding,  yet  one  that  ought  to  be  stimulating  and 
inspiring.  If  we  look  back  with  a  shudder  we  should 
look  forward  with  a  thrill.  If  the  past  is  terrible, 
the  future  is  in  the  same  degree  cheering  and  invit- 
ing. If  we  came  out  of  those  lowly  and  groveling 
forms,  to  what  heights  of  being  may  we  not  be  carried 
by  the  impetus  that  brought  us  thus  far?  In  fact,  to 
what  heights  has  it  already  carried  us ! 

II 

That  the  hazards  of  the  past,  to  many  forms  of 
life,  at  least,  have  been  real  and  no  myth,  is  evident 
from  the  vast  number  of  forms  that  have  been  cut 
off  and  become  extinct;  various  causes,  now  hard 
to  decipher,  have  worked  together  to  the  end,  such 

228 


THE  HAZARDS  OF  THE   PAST 

as  changed  geographical  conditions,  changes  of  cli- 
mate, affecting  the  food- supply,  extreme  speciaHz- 
ation,  like  that  of  the  sabre-toothed  tiger  whose 
petrified  remains  have  been  found  in  various  parts 
of  this  continent,  and  who  apparently  was  finally 
handicapped  by  his  huge  dental  sabre.  Probal)ly 
many  more  species  of  animals  have  become  extinct 
than  have  survived,  but  none  of  these  could  have 
been  in  the  fine  of  man's  descent,  else  the  human 
race  would  not  have  been  here.  If  the  Eocene  pro- 
genitor of  the  horse,  the  little  four-toed  eohipi>us, 
had  been  cut  off,  would  not  the  world  have  been 
horseless  to-day?  The  horse  in  America  became  ex- 
tinct, from  some  cause  only  conjectural,  many  tens 
of  thousands  of  years  ago.  Had  the  same  fate  be- 
fallen the  horse  in  Europe  and  Asia,  it  seems  prob- 
able that  our  civilization  would  have  been  far  less 
advanced  to-day  than  it  is. 

The  fate  of  every  species  of  mammal  in  our  time 
seems  to  have  been  in  the  keeping  of  a  single  form 
in  early  Tertiary  times.  The  end  of  the  Cretaceous 
or  chalk  period  saw  the  extinction  of  the  giant  rep- 
tiles both  of  sea  and  of  land,  at  the  same  time  that 
it  saw  the  appearance  of  a  great  many  species  of 
small  and  inconspicuous  mammals,  among  which 
doubtless  were  our  own  humble  forebears.  Extreme 
specialization  in  any  direction  may  narrow  an  an- 
imal's chances  of  survival;  they  have  but  one  chance 
in  the  game  of  life,  whereas  an  animal  with  a  more 

229 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

generalized  organization  has  many  chances.  Man 
is  one  of  the  most  generalized  of  animals;  no  special 
tools,  no  special  weapons  —  his  hand  many  tools  and 
weapons  in  one.  Hence  he  is  the  most  adaptable 
of  animals;  all  climes,  all  foods,  all  places  are  his;  he 
is  master  of  the  land,  of  the  sea,  of  the  air. 

Animal  life  is  often  curiously  interdependent.  I 
asked  our  guide  in  the  Adirondacks  if  there  were 
any  ravens  there.  "Not  nearly  as  many  as  there 
used  to  be,"  he  said,  and  his  explanation  of  their 
disappearance  seems  thoroughly  scientific;  it  was 
that  the  wolves  and  the  panthers  kept  them  in  meat, 
and  now  that  these  animals  had  disappeared,  the 
ravens  had  little  to  feed  upon.  If  the  moose  were 
compelled  to  graze  from  off  the  ground,  like  a  sheep 
or  a  cow,  the  species  would  probably  soon  become 
extinct.  Osborn  thinks  it  probable  that  the  huge 
beast  called  titanothere  finally  became  extinct  early 
in  Tertiary  times  owing  to  the  form  of  its  teeth, 
which  were  of  such  a  type  that  they  could  not 
change  to  meet  a  change  in  the  flora  upon  which  the 
creature  fed.  Of  course  we  shall  never  know  what 
narrow  escapes  our  race  had  from  extinction  in  the 
remote  past;  some  forms  have  ended  in  a  blind  alley, 
like  the  sea-urchin  and  the  oyster.  Arthropoda  have 
continued  to  evolve  and  have  reached  their  high- 
water  mark  of  intelligence  in  bees  and  ants.  The 
vertebrates  went  forward  and  have  culminated  in 
man.  Bergson  thinks  that  in  the  vertebrates  intel- 

230 


THE  HAZARDS  OF  THE   PAST 

ligence  has  been  developed  at  the  expense  of  in- 
stinct, and  that  in  the  invertebrates  instinct  has 
been  perfected  at  the  expense  of  intelHgence. 

Are  we  not  compelled  to  adopt  what  is  called  the 
monophyletic  hypothesis,  that  is,  that  our  line  of 
descent  started  from  one  pair,  male  and  female, 
somewhere  in  the  vast  stretch  of  geologic  or  biologic 
time,  and  to  reason  that,  had  that  pair  been  out  of 
the  race,  we  should  not  have  appeared? 

Can  we  narrow  life  to  a  single  point,  a  single  cell, 
in  the  past?  Was  there  one  and  only  one  first  bit  of 
protoplasm?  If  we  were  to  say  that  life  first  ap- 
peared on  the  globe  in  Cambrian  times,  just  what 
should  we  mean?  That  it  began  as  a  single  point, 
or  as  many  points?  When  we  say  that  the  primates 
first  appeared  in  Eocene  times,  do  we  mean  that 
one  single  primate  appeared  then?  If  so,  what  form 
went  immediately  before  him?  This  is  all  a  vain 
speculation. 

Does  man  presuppose  all  the  vertebrate  sub-king- 
dom? Was  he  safe  as  long  as  one  vertebrate  form 
remained?  Are  his  forebears  many,  and  not  one 
pair?  Can  we  think  of  his  ancestry  under  the  image 
of  a  tree,  and  of  him  as  one  of  the  many  branches?  If 
so,  nothing  but  the  destruction  of  the  tree  would  have 
imperiled  his  appearance,  or  the  lopping  off  of  his 
particular  branch.  Probably  all  such  images  are 
misleading.  We  simply  cannot  figure  to  ourselves 
the  tangled  course  of  our  biological  descent.    If 

231 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

thwartings  and  accidents  and  delays  could  have  cut 
man  off,  how  could  he  have  escaped?  We  cannot 
think  of  man  as  one;  we  are  compelled  to  think  of 
him  as  many;  and  yet  in  all  our  experience  the  many 
come  from  the  one,  or  the  one  pair. 

How  thick  the  field  of  animal  life  in  the  past  is 
strewn  with  extinct  forms !  —  as  thick  as  the  sidereal 
spaces  are  strewn  with  the  fragments  of  wrecked 
worlds !  But  other  worlds  and  suns  are  spun  out  of 
the  wrecked  worlds  and  suns  through  the  process  of 
cosmic  evolution.  The  world-stuff  is  worked  over 
and  over.  Extinct  animal  forms  must  have  given 
rise  to  other,  allied  forms  before  they  perished,  and 
these  to  still  others,  and  so  on  down  to  our  time. 

The  image  of  a  tree  is  misleading  from  the  fact 
that  all  the  different  branches  of  the  animal  king- 
dom, from  the  protozoa  up  to  man,  have  come  along 
with  what  we  call  the  higher  branches,  the  mam- 
mals ;  the  suckers  have  kept  pace  with  the  main  stalk, 
so  that  we  have  the  image  of  a  sheaf  of  branches 
starting  from  a  common  origin  and  all  of  equal 
length.  Man  has  brought  on  his  relations  along  with 
him. 

There  is  no  glamour  of  romance  over  that  past. 
It  was  all  hard,  prosy,  terrible  fact.  The  earth's 
crust  was  less  stable  than  now,  the  upheavals  and 
subsidences  and  earthquakes  more  frequent,  the 
warring  of  the  elements  more  fierce  and  incessant, 
deluge  and  inundation  in  more  rapid  succession,  and 

232 


THE  HAZARDS  OF  THE  PAST 

the  riot  and  excesses  of  animal  life  far  beyond  any- 
thing we  know  of.  And  our  Hne  of  descent  was  tak- 
ing its  chances  amid  it  all.  The  widespread  blotting 
out  of  life  at  the  end  of  Palaeozoic  time,  and  again  at 
the  end  of  Mesozoic  times,  when  myriads  of  forms 
were  cut  off,  probably  from  some  convulsion  of  na- 
ture or  some  cosmic  catastrophe;  and  again  during 
the  ice  age,  when  the  camel,  the  llama,  the  horse, 
the  tapir,  the  mastodon,  the  elephant,  the  giant 
sloth,  became  extinct  in  North  America  —  how 
fared  it  with  our  ancestor  during  these  terrible  ages? 
There  is  no  sure  trace  of  him  till  late  Tertiary  times, 
and  it  is  probably  not  more  than  two  hundred  thou- 
sand years  ago  that  he  assumed  the  upright  attitude 
and  began  to  use  tools.  Probably  in  Europe  fifty 
thousand  years  ago  he  was  living  in  caves,  clothed 
in  skins,  contending  with  the  cave  bear  and  cave 
lion,  using  rude  stone  implements,  and  hunting  the 
hairy  mastodon,  etc.  In  Asia  the  probabilities  are 
that  he  was  farther  on  the  road  toward  the  dawn  of 
history. 

We  may  think  of  our  descent  in  the  historic  period 
under  the  image  of  the  stream,  though  of  a  stream 
many  times  delayed  and  diverted,  even  many  times 
diminished  by  wars  and  plagues  and  famine,  but  a 
stream  with  some  sort  of  unity  and  continuity,  since 
man  became  man.  The  stream  of  life  is  like  any 
other  stream  in  this  respect.   Divert  or  use  up  part 

2vS3 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

of  the  water  of  a  stream,  yet  what  is  left  flows  on 
and  keeps  up  the  continuity  and  identity  of  the 
stream;  dip  your  cup  into  it  here,  and  you  will  not 
get  precisely  the  same  water  you  would  have  got 
had  none  of  it  been  diverted  or  used  far  back  in  its 
course  —  you  get  the  water  that  was  allowed  to 
flow  by. 

Had  there  been  no  loss  of  life  by  war  and  pesti- 
lence and  accidents  of  various  kinds,  the  different 
countries  would  have  been  occupied  by  quite  other 
men  and  women  than  those  that  fill  them  to-day. 
The  course  of  life  in  every  neighborhood  is  changed 
by  what  seem  like  accidental  causes,  as  when  a  fam- 
ily is  practically  wiped  out  by  some  accident  or  dread 
disease.  This  brings  new  people  on  the  scene.  The 
farm  or  the  business  falls  into  other  hands,  and  new 
social  relations  spring  up,  new  men  and  women  are 
brought  together  or  the  old  ones  driven  apart,  mar- 
riage is  hastened  or  retarded,  opportunities  for  fam- 
ily life  are  made  or  unmade,  and  fewer  children,  or 
more  children,  as  the  case  may  be,  are  the  result. 
The  issue  of  some  battle  hundreds  or  thousands  of 
years  ago  m^y  have  played  a  part  in  your  life  and 
mine  to-day  —  other  races,  other  individuals  of  the 
race,  would  have  been  thrown  together  had  the  issue 
been  different,  and  other  families  started,  so  that 
some  one  else  would  have  been  here  in  our  stead. 

But  the  question  of  hazard  to  the  race  of  man  in 
geologic  time  is  quite  a  different  one.  Here  our  fate 

234 


THE  HAZARDS  OF  THE  PAST 

seems  to  hang  by  a  single  thread— a  golden  thread, 
we  may  call  it,  but,  in  that  terrible  maze  of  clashing 
forces  and  devouring  forms  of  the  vast  geologic  peri- 
ods, how  liable  to  be  broken !   It  is  not  now  a  ques- 
tion of  the  continuity  of  a  stream,  but  of  the  contin- 
uity of  a  single  evolutionary  process,  or,  as  Haeckel 
says,   the  continuity  of  the  morphological  chain 
which  stretches  from  the  lemurs  up  through  tailed 
and  tailless  anthropoid  apes  to  man.    If  the  evolu- 
tionary impulse  had  been  checked  or  extinguished  in 
the  lemur  —  that  small  apelike  animal  that  went 
before  the  true  ape,  the  fossil  remains  of  which  have 
been  found  on  this  continent  and  the  survivals  of 
which  are  now  found  in  Madagascar  —  would  man 
have  appeared?  Again,  if  the  race  of  lemurs  devel- 
oped from  a  single  pair,  how  precarious  seems  our 
fate!    In  fact,  if  any  of  the  transitional  forms  be- 
tween species  can  be  reduced  to  a  single  pair  —  as 
the  fcJrms  that  connect  the  reptiles  with  the  mam- 
mals —  our  fate  would  seem  to  be  in  the  keeping 
of  these  forms.    Over  this  single  frail  bridge  which 
escaped  the  floods  and  the  tornadoes  and  the  earth- 
quakes of  those  terrible  ages  we  must  have  passed. 
What  risky  business  it  all  seems !  Was  it  luck  or  law 
that  favored  us?    Doubtless,  if  we  could  penetrate 
the  mystery,  we  should  see  that  there  was  no  chance 
or  risk  in  the  matter.    We  cannot  go  very  far  in 
solving  these  great  fundamental  questions  by  ap- 
plying to  them  the  tests  of  our  own  experience. 

235 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

Numberless  specific  forms  become  extinct,  but  the 
impulse  that  begat  the  form  does  not  die  out.  Thus, 
all  the  giant  reptiles  died  out  —  the  dinosaurs,  the 
mesosaurs  —  but  the  reptilian  impulse  still  sur- 
vives. How  many  types  of  invertebrates  have  per- 
ished! but  the  invertebrate  impulse  still  goes  on. 
How  many  species  of  mammals  have  been  cut  off! 
yet  the  mammal  impulse  has  steadily  gone  forward. 
These  things  suggest  the  wave  that  moves  on  but 
leaves  the  water  behind.  The  vertebrate  impulse 
began  in  wormlike  forms,  in  the  old  Palaeozoic  seas, 
and  stopped  not  till  it  culminated  in  man.  This  im- 
pulse has  left  many  forms  behind  it;  but  has  this 
impulse  itself  ever  been  endangered?  If  one  looks  at 
the  matter  thus  in  an  abstract  instead  of  a  concrete 
way,  the  problem  of  our  descent  becomes  easier. 

When  we  look  at  the  evolution  of  life  on  a  grand 
scale,  nature  seems  to  feel  her  way,  like  a  blind  man, 
groping,  hesitating,  trying  this  road  and  then  that. 
In  some  cases  the  line  of  evolution  seems  to  end  in  a 
cul  de  sac  beyond  which  no  progress  is  possible.  The 
forms  thus  cornered  soon  become  extinct.  The 
mystery,  the  unaccountable  thing,  is  the  appearance 
of  new  characters.  The  slow  modification  or  trans- 
formation of  an  existing  character  may  often  be 
traced;  natural  selection,  or  the  struggle  for  exist- 
ence, takes  it  in  hand  and  adapts  and  perpetuates  it, 
or  else  eliminates  it.  But  the  origin  of  certain  new 
parts  or  characters  —  that  is  the  secret  of  the  evolu- 

2C6 


THE  HAZARDS  OF  THE   PAST 

tlonary  process.    Thus  there  was  a  time  when    no 
animal  had  horns;  then  horns  appeared.    "In  the 
great  quadruped  known  as  titanothere,"  says  Os- 
born,  "rudiments  of  horns  first  arise  independently 
at  certain  definite  parts  of  the  skull;  they  arise  at 
first  ahke  in  both  sexes,  or  asexually;  then  they  be- 
come sexual,  or  chiefly  characteristic  of  males;  then 
they  rapidly  evolve  in  the  males  while  being  arrested 
in  development  in  the  females;  finally,  they  become 
in  some  of  the  animals  dominant  characteristics  to 
which  all  others  bend."  Nature  seems  to  throw  out 
these  new  characters  and  then  lets  them  take  their 
chances  in  the  clash  of  forces  and  tendencies  that 
go  on  in  the  arena  of  life.   If  they  serve  a  purpose  or 
are  an  advantage,  they  remain;  if  not,  they  drop 
out.  Nature  feels  her  way.  The  horns  proved  of  less 
advantage  to  the  females  than  to  the  males;  they 
seem  a  part  of  the  plus  or  overflow  of  the  male  prin- 
ciple, like  the  beard  in  man  —  the  badge  of  mas- 
culinity.   The  titanothere  is  traceable  back  to  a 
hornless  animal  the  size  of  a  sheep,  and  it  ended  in 
a  horned  quadruped  nearly  as  large  as  an  elephant. 
It  flourished  in  Wyoming  in  early  Tertiary  times. 
Nature  did  not  seem  to  know  what  to  do  with  horns 
when  she  first  got  them.   She  played  with  them  like 
a  child  with  a  new  toy.   Thus  she  gave  two  pairs  to 
several  species  of  mammals,  one  pair  on  the  nose  and 
one  pair  on  the  top  of  the  skull  —  certainly  an  em- 
barrassment of  weapons. 

237 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

The  first  horns  appear  to  have  been  crude, 
heavy,  uncouth,  but  long  before  we  reach  our  own 
geologic  era  they  appear  in  various  species  of  quad- 
rupeds, and  become  graceful  and  ornamental.  How 
beautiful  they  are  in  many  of  the  African  antelope 
tribe!  Nature's  workmanship  nearly  always  im- 
proves with  time,  like  that  of  man's,  and  sooner 
or  later  takes  on  an  ornamental  phase. 

The  early  uncouth,  bizarre  forms  seem  to  be  the 
result  of  the  excess  or  surplus  of  life.  Life  in  remote 
biologic  times  was  rank  and  riotous,  as  it  is  now, 
in  a  measure,  in  tropical  lands.  One  reason  may  be 
that  the  climate  of  the  globe  during  the  middle 
period,  and  well  into  the  third  period,  appears  to 
have  been  of  a  tropical  character.  The  climatic  and 
seasonal  divisions  were  not  at  all  pronounced,  and 
both  animal  and  vegetable  life  took  on  gigantic 
and  grotesque  forms.  In  the  ugliness  of  alligator 
and  rhinoceros  and  hippopotamus  of  our  day  we  get 
some  hint  of  what  early  reptilian  and  mammalian 
life  was  like. 

That  Nature  should  have  turned  out  better  and 
better  handiwork  as  the  ages  passed ;  that  she  either 
should  have  improved  upon  every  model  or  else  dis- 
carded it;  that  she  should  have  progressed  from  the 
bird,  half -dragon,  to  the  sweet  songsters  of  our  day 
and  to  the  superb  forms  of  the  air  that  we  know; 
that  evolution  should  have  entered  upon  a  refining 
and  spiritualizing  phase,  developing  larger  brains 

238 


THE   HAZARDS   OF  THE  PAST 

and  smaller  bodies,  is  a  very  significant  fact,  and 
one  quite  beyond  the  range  of  the  mechanistic  con- 
ception of  life. 

Our  own  immediate  line  of  descent  leads  down 
through  the  minor  forms  of  Tertiary  and  Mesozoic 
times  —  forms  that  probably  skulked  and  dodged 
about  amid  the  terrible  and  gigantic  creatures  of 
those  ages  as  the  small  game  of  to-day  hide  and  flee 
from  the  presence  of  their  arch-enemy,  man;  and 
that  the  frail  line  upon  which  the  fate  of  the  human 
race  hung  should  not  have  been  severed  during  the 
wild  turmoil  of  those  ages  is,  to  me,  a  source  of  per- 
petual wonder. 

Ill 

The  hazards  of  the  future  of  the  race  must  be 
quite  different  from  those  I  have  been  considering. 
They  are  the  hazards  incident  to  an  exceptional 
being  upon  this  earth  —  a  being  that  takes  his  fate 
in  his  own  hands  in  a  sense  that  no  other  creature 
does. 

Man  has  partaken  of  the  fruit  of  the  Tree  of 
Good  and  Evil,  which  all  the  lower  orders  have  es- 
caped. He  knows,  and  knows  that  he  knows.  Will 
this  knowledge,  through  the  opposition  in  which  it 
places  him  to  elemental  nature  and  the  vast  system 
of  artificial  things  with  which  it  has  enabled  him  to 
surround  himself,  cut  short  his  history  upon  this 
planet.^  Will  Nature  in  the  end  be  avenged  for  the 
secrets  he  has  forced  from  her?  His  civilization  has 

239 


TIME  AND   CHANGE 

doubtless  made  him  the  victim  of  diseases  to  which 
the  lower  orders,  and  even  savage  man,  are  strang- 
ers. Will  not  these  diseases  increase  as  his  life  be- 
comes more  and  more  complex  and  artificial?  Will 
he  go  on  extending  his  mastery  over  Nature  and  re- 
fining or  suppressing  his  natural  appetites  till  his 
original  hold  upon  life  is  fatally  enfeebled? 

It  seems  as  though  science  ought  to  save  man  and 
prolong  his  stay  on  this  planet,  —  it  ought  to  bring 
him  natural  salvation,  as  his  religion  promises  him 
supernatural  salvation.  But  of  course,  man's  fate 
is  bound  up  with  the  fate  of  the  planet  and  of  the 
biological  tree  of  which  he  is  one  of  the  shoots. 
Biology  is  rooted  in  geology.  The  higher  forms  of 
life  did  not  arbitrarily  appear,  they  flowed  out  of 
conditions  that  were  long  in  maturing;  they  flow- 
ered in  season,  and  the  flower  will  fall  in  season. 
Man  could  not  have  appeared  earlier  than  he  did, 
nor  later  than  he  did ;  he  came  out  of  what  went  be- 
fore, and  he  will  go  out  with  what  comes  after.  His 
coming  was  natural,  and  his  going  will  be  natural. 
His  period  had  a  beginning,  and  it  will  have  an  end. 
Natural  philosophy  leads  one  to  affirm  this;  but  of 
time  measured  by  human  history  he  may  yet  have  a 
lease  of  tens  of  thousands  of  years. 

The  hazard  of  the  future  is  a  question  of  both 
astronomy  and  geology.  That  there  are  cosmic 
dangers,  though  infinitely  remote,  every  astronomer 
knows.   That  there  are  collisions  between  heavenly 

240 


THE  HAZARDS  OF  THE  PAST 

bodies  is  an  indubitable  fact,  and  if  collisions  do 
happen  to  any,  allow  time  enough  and  they  must 
happen  to  all.  That  there  are  geologic  dangers 
through  the  shifting  and  crumpling  of  the  earth's 
crust,  every  geologist  knows,  though  probably  none 
that  could  wipe  out  the  whole  race  of  man.  The 
biologic  dangers  of  the  past  we  have  outlived  — 
the  dangers  that  must  have  beset  a  single  line  of 
descent  amid  the  carnival  of  power  and  the  ferocity 
of  the  monster  reptiles  of  Mesozoic  times,  and  the 
wholesale  extinction  of  species  that  occurred  in 
different  geologic  periods. 

Nothing  but  a  cosmic  catastrophe,  involving  the 
fate  of  the  whole  earth,  could  now  exterminate  the 
human  race.  It  is  highly  improbable  that  this  will 
ever  happen.  The  race  of  man  will  go  out  from  a 
slow,  insensible  failure,  through  the  aging  of  the 
planet,  of  the  conditions  of  life  that  brought  man 
here.  The  evolutionary  process  upon  a  cooling 
world  must,  after  the  elapse  of  a  vast  period  of  time, 
lose  its  impetus  and  cease. 


XIII 
THE  GOSPEL  OF  NATURE 


THE  other  day  a  clergyman  who  described  him- 
self as  a  preacher  of  the  gospel  of  Christ  wrote, 
asking  me  to  come  and  talk  to  his  people  on  the  gos- 
pel of  Nature.  The  request  set  me  to  thinking 
whether  or  not  Nature  has  any  gospel  in  the  sense 
the  clergyman  had  in  mind,  any  message  that  is 
likely  to  be  specially  comforting  to  the  average 
orthodox  religious  person.  I  suppose  the  parson 
wished  me  to  tell  his  flock  what  I  had  found  in  Na- 
ture that  was  a  strength  or  a  solace  to  myself. 

What  had  all  my  many  years  of  journeyings  to 
Nature  yielded  me  that  would  supplement  or  rein- 
force the  gospel  he  was  preaching.^  Had  the  birds 
taught  me  any  valuable  lessons.'*  Had  the  four- 
footed  beasts?  Had  the  insects?  Had  the  flowers, 
the  trees,  the  soil,  the  coming  and  the  going  of  the 
seasons?  Had  I  really  found  sermons  in  stones, 
books  in  running  brooks  and  good  in  everything? 
Had  the  lilies  of  the  field,  that  neither  toil  nor  spin, 
and  yet  are  more  royally  clad  than  Solomon  in  all 
his  glory,  helped  me  in  any  way  to  clothe  myself 
with  humility,  with  justice,  with  truthfulness? 

243 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

It  is  not  easy  for  one  to  say  just  what  he  owes  to 
all  these  things.  Natural  influences  work  indirectly 
as  well  as  directly;  they  work  upon  the  subconscious, 
as  well  as  upon  the  conscious,  self.  That  I  am  a 
saner,  healthier,  more  contented  man,  with  truer 
standards  of  life,  for  all  my  loiterings  in  the  fields 
and  woods,  I  am  fully  convinced. 

That  I  am  less  social,  less  interested  in  my  neigh- 
bors and  in  the  body  politic,  more  inclined  to  shirk 
civic  and  social  responsibilities  and  to  stop  my  ears 
against  the  brawling  of  the  reformers,  is  perhaps 
equally  true. 

One  thing  is  certain,  in  a  hygienic  way  I  owe 
much  to  my  excursions  to  Nature.  They  have  helped 
to  clothe  me  with  health,  if  not  with  humility;  they 
have  helped  sharpen  and  attune  all  my  senses;  they 
have  kept  my  eyes  in  such  good  trim  that  they  have 
not  failed  me  for  one  moment  during  all  the  seventy- 
five  years  I  have  had  them;  they  have  made  my 
sense  of  smell  so  keen  that  I  have  much  pleasure  in 
the  wild,  open-air  perfumes,  especially  in  the  spring 
—  the  delicate  breath  of  the  blooming  elms  and 
maples  and  willows,  the  breath  of  the  woods,  of  the 
pastures,  of  the  shore.  This  keen,  healthy  sense  of 
smell  has  made  me  abhor  tobacco  and  flee  from  close 
rooms,  and  put  the  stench  of  cities  behind  me.  I 
fancy  that  this  whole  world  of  wild,  natural  per- 
fumes is  lost  to  the  tobacco-user  and  to  the  city- 
dweller.   Senses  trained  in  the  open  air  are  in  tune 

244 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  NATURE 

with  open-air  objects;  they  are  quick,  delicate,  and 
discriminating.  When  I  go  to  town,  my  ear  suffers 
as  well  as  my  nose:  the  impact  of  the  city  upon  my 
senses  is  hard  and  dissonant;  the  ear  is  stunned,  the 
nose  is  outraged,  and  the  eye  is  confused.  When  I 
come  back,  I  go  to  Nature  to  be  soothed  and  healed, 
and  to  have  my  senses  put  in  tune  once  more.  I 
know  that,  as  a  rule,  country  or  farming  folk  are  not 
remarkable  for  the  delicacy  of  their  senses,  but  this 
is  owing  mainly  to  the  benumbing  and  brutalizing 
effect  of  continued  hard  labor.  It  is  their  minds 
more  than  their  bodies  that  suffer. 

When  I  have  dwelt  in  'cities  the  country  was 
always  near  by,  and  I  used  to  get  a  bite  of  country 
soil  at  least  once  a  week  to  keep  my  system  nor- 
mal. 

Emerson  says  that  "the  day  does  not  seem  wholly 
profane  in  which  we  have  given  heed  to  some  natural 
object."  If  Emerson  had  stopped  to  qualify  his  re- 
mark, he  would  have  added,  if  we  give  heed  to  it  in 
the  right  spirit,  if  we  give  heed  to  it  as  a  nature-lover 
and  truth-seeker.  Nature  love  as  Emerson  knew  it, 
and  as  Wordsworth  knew  it,  and  as  any  of  the 
choicer  spirits  of  our  time  have  known  it,  has  dis- 
tinctly a  religious  value.  It  does  not  come  to  a  man 
or  a  woman  who  is  wholly  absorbed  in  selfish  or 
worldly  or  material  ends.  Except  ye  become  in  a 
measure  as  little  children,  ye  cannot  enter  the  king- 
dom of  Nature  —  as  Audubon  entered  it,  as  Tho- 

245 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

reau  entered  it,  as  Bryant  and  Amiel  entered  it,  and 
as  all  those  enter  it  who  make  it  a  resource  in  their 
lives  and  an  instrument  of  their  culture.  The  forms 
and  creeds  of  religion  change,  but  the  sentiment  of 
religion — the  wonder  and  reverence  and  love  we  feel 
in  the  presence  of  the  inscrutable  universe  —  per- 
sists. Indeed,  these  seem  to  be  renewing  their  life 
to-day  in  this  growing  love  for  all  natural  objects 
and  in  this  increasing  tenderness  toward  all  forms 
of  life.  If  we  do  not  go  to  church  so  much  as  did  our 
fathers,  we  go  to  the  woods  much  more,  and  are 
much  more  inclined  to  make  a  temple  of  them  than 
they  were. 

We  now  use  the  word  Nature  very  much  as  our 
fathers  used  the  word  God,  and,  I  suppose,  back  of 
it  all  we  mean  the  power  that  is  everywhere  present 
and  active,  and  in  whose  lap  the  visible  universe  is 
held  and  nourished.  It  is  a  power  that  we  can  see 
and  touch  and  hear,  and  realize  every  moment  of 
our  lives  how  absolutely  we  are  dependent  upon  it. 
There  are  no  atheists  or  skeptics  in  regard  to  this 
power.  All  men  see  how  literally  we  are  its  child- 
ren, and  all  men  learn  how  swift  and  sure  is  the 
penalty  of  disobedience  to  its  commands. 

Our  associations  with  Nature  vulgarize  it  and  rob 
it  of  its  divinity.  When  we  come  to  see  that  the 
celestial  and  the  terrestrial  are  one,  that  time  and 
eternity  are  one,  that  mind  and  matter  are  one,  that 
death  and  life  are  one,  that  there  is  and  can  be  no- 

246 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  NATURE 

thing  not  inherent  in  Nature,  then  we  no  longer  look 
for  or  expect  a  far-off,  unknown  God. 

Nature  teaches  more  than  she  preaches.  There 
are  no  sermons  in  stones.  It  is  easier  to  get  a  spark 
out  of  a  stone  than  a  moral.  Even  when  it  contains 
a  fossil,  it  teaches  history  rather  than  morals.  It 
comes  down  from  the  fore-world  an  undigested  bit 
that  has  resisted  the  tooth  and  maw  of  time,  and 
can  tell  you  many  things  if  you  have  the  eye  to  read 
them.  The  soil  upon  which  it  lies  or  in  which  it  is 
imbedded  was  rock,  too,  back  in  geologic  time,  but 
the  mill  that  ground  it  up  passed  the  fragment  of 
stone  through  without  entirely  reducing  it.  Very 
likely  it  is  made  up  of  the  minute  remains  of  innum- 
erable tiny  creatures  that  lived  and  died  in  the  an- 
cient seas.  Very  likely  it  was  torn  from  its  parent 
rock  and  brought  to  the  place  where  it  now  lies  by 
the  great  ice-flood  that  many  tens  of  thousands  of 
years  ago  crept  slowly  but  irresistibly  down  out  of 
the  North  over  the  greater  part  of  all  the  northern 
continents. 

But  all  this  appeals  to  the  intellect,  and  contains 
no  lesson  for  the  moral  nature.  If  we  are  to  find 
sermons  in  stones,  we  are  to  look  for  them  in  the  re- 
lations of  the  stones  to  other  things  —  when  they 
are  out  of  place,  when  they  press  down  the  grass  or 
the  flowers,  or  impede  the  plow,  or  dull  the  scythe, 
or  usurp  the  soil,  or  shelter  vermin,  as  do  old  institu- 
tions and  old  usages  that  have  had  their  day.    A 

247 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

stone  that  is  much  knocked  about  gets  its  sharp 
angles  worn  off,  as  do  men.  "A  rolling  stone  gathers 
no  moss,"  which  is  not  bad  for  the  stone,  as  moss 
hastens  decay.  *' Killing  two  birds  with  one  stone" 
is  a  bad  saying,  because  it  reminds  boys  to  stone  the 
birds,  which  is  bad  for  both  boys  and  birds.  But 
**  People  who  live  in  glass  houses  should  not  throw 
stones"  is  on  the  right  side  of  the  account,  as  it  dis- 
courages stone-throwing  and  reminds  us  that  we 
are  no  better  than  our  neighbors. 

The  lesson  in  running  brooks  is  that  motion  is  a 
great  purifier  and  health-producer.  When  the  brook 
ceases  to  run,  it  soon  stagnates.  It  keeps  in  touch 
with  the  great  vital  currents  when  it  is  in  motion, 
and  unites  with  other  brooks  to  help  make  the  river. 
In  motion  it  soon  leaves  all  mud  and  sediment  be- 
hind. Do  not  proper  work  and  the  exercise  of  will 
power  have  the  same  effect  upon  our  lives? 

The  other  day  in  my  walk  I  came  upon  a  sap- 
bucket  that  had  been  left  standing  by  the  maple 
tree  all  the  spring  and  summer.  What  a  bucketful 
of  corruption  was  that,  a  mixture  of  sap  and  rain- 
water that  had  rotted,  and  smelled  to  heaven.  Mice 
and  birds  and  insects  had  been  drowned  in  it,  and 
added  to  its  unsavory  character.  It  was  a  bit  of  Na- 
ture cut  off  from  the  vitalizing  and  purifying  chem- 
istry of  the  whole.  With  what  satisfaction  I  emp- 
tied it  upon  the  ground  while  I  held  my  nose  and 
saw  it  filter  into  the  turf,  where  I  knew  it  was  dying 

248 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  NATURE 

to  go  and  where  I  knew  every  particle  of  the  reeking, 
fetid  fluid  would  soon  be  made  sweet  and  whole- 
some again  by  the  chemistry  of  the  soil ! 

II 

I  am  not  always  in  sympathy  with  nature-study 
as  pursued  in  the  schools,  as  if  this  kingdom  could 
be  carried  by  assault.  Such  study  is  too  cold,  too 
special,  too  mechanical;  it  is  likely  to  rub  the  bloom 
off  Nature.  It  lacks  soul  and  emotion;  it  misses  the 
accessories  of  the  open  air  and  its  exhilarations,  the 
sky,  the  clouds,  the  landscape,  and  the  currents  of 
life  that  pulse  everywhere. 

I  myself  have  never  made  a  dead  set  at  studying 
Nature  with  note-book  and  field-glass  in  hand.  I 
have  rather  visited  with  her.  We  have  walked  to- 
gether or  sat  down  together,  and  our  intimacy  grows 
with  the  seasons.  What  I  have  learned  about  her 
ways  I  have  learned  easily,  almost  unconsciously, 
while  fishing  or  camping  or  idling  about.  My  desult- 
ory habits  have  their  disadvantages,  no  doubt,  but 
they  have  their  advantages  also.  A  too  strenuous 
pursuit  defeats  itself.  In  the  fields  and  woods  more 
than  anywhere  else  all  things  come  to  those  who 
wait,  because  all  things  are  on  the  move,  and  are 
sure  sooner  or  later  to  come  your  way. 

To  absorb  a  thing  is  better  than  to  learn  it,  and 
we  absorb  what  we  enjoy.  We  learn  things  at 
school,  we  absorb  them  in  the  fields  and  woods  and 

249 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

on  the  farm.  When  we  look  upon  Nature  with  fond- 
ness and  appreciation  she  meets  us  halfway  and 
takes  a  deeper  hold  upon  us  than  when  studiously 
conned.  Hence  I  say  the  way  of  knowledge  of  Na- 
ture is  the  way  of  love  and  enjoyment,  and  is  more 
surely  found  in  the  open  air  than  in  the  school-room 
or  the  laboratory.  The  other  day  I  saw  a  lot  of  col- 
lege girls  dissecting  cats  and  making  diagrams  of  the 
circulation  and  muscle-attachments,  and  I  thought 
it  pretty  poor  business  unless  the  girls  were  taking 
a  course  in  comparative  anatomy  with  a  view  to 
some  occupation  in  life.  What  is  the  moral  and  in- 
tellectual value  of  this  kind  of  knowledge  to  those 
girls?  Biology  is,  no  doubt,  a  great  science  in  the 
hands  of  great  men,  but  it  is  not  for  all.  I  myself 
have  got  along  very  well  without  it.  I  am  sure  I 
can  learn  more  of  what  I  want  to  know  from  a  kit- 
ten on  my  knee  than  from  the  carcass  of  a  cat  in 
the  laboratory.  Darwin  spent  eight  years  dissecting 
barnacles;  but  he  was  Darwin,  and  did  not  stop  at 
barnacles,  as  these  college  girls  are  pretty  sure  to 
stop  at  cats.  He  dissected  and  put  together  again 
in  his  mental  laboratory  the  whole  system  of  animal 
hfe,  and  the  upshot  of  his  work  was  a  tremendous 
gain  to  our  understanding  of  the  universe. 

I  would  rather  see  the  girls  in  the  fields  and  woods 
studying  and  enjoying  living  nature,  training  their 
eyes  to  see  correctly  and  their  hearts  to  respond 
intelligently.    What  is  knowledge  without  enjoy- 

250 


THE   GOSPEL  OF  NATURE 

ment,  without  love?  It  is  sympathy,  appreciation, 
emotional  experience,  which  refine  and  elevate  and 
breathe  into  exact  knowledge  the  breath  of  life. 
My  own  interest  is  in  living  nature  as  it  moves 
and  flourishes  about  me  winter  and  summer. 

I  know  it  is  one  thing  to  go  forth  as  a  nature-lover, 
and  quite  another  to  go  forth  in  a  spirit  of  cold, 
calculating,  exact  science.  I  call  myself  a  nature- 
lover  and  not  a  scientific  naturalist.  All  that  sci- 
ence has  to  tell  me  is  welcome,  is,  indeed,  eagerly 
sought  for.  I  must  know  as  well  as  feel.  I  am  not 
merely  contented,  like  Wordsworth's  poet,  to  enjoy 
what  others  understand.  I  must  understand  also; 
but  above  all  things  I  must  enjoy.  How  much  of  my 
enjoyment  springs  from  my  knowledge  I  do  not 
know.  The  joy  of  knowing  is  very  great;  the  delight 
of  picking  up  the  threads  of  meaning  here  and  there, 
and  following  them  through  the  maze  of  confusing 
facts,  I  know  well.  When  I  hear  the  woodpecker 
drumming  on  a  dry  limb  in  spring  or  the  grouse 
drumming  in  the  woods,  and  know  what  it  is  all  for, 
why,  that  knowledge,  I  suppose,  is  part  of  my  enjoy- 
ment. The  other  part  is  the  associations  that  those 
sounds  call  up  as  voicing  the  arrival  of  spring :  they 
are  the  drums  that  lead  the  joyous  procession. 

To  enjoy  understandingly,  that,  I  fancy,  is  the 
great  thing  to  be  desired.  When  I  see  the  large 
ichneumon-fly,  Thalessa,  making  a  loop  over  her 
back  with  her  long  ovipositor  and  drilling  a  hole  in 

251 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

the  trunk  of  a  tree,  I  do  not  fully  appreciate  the 
spectacle  till  I  know  she  is  feeling  for  the  burrow  of 
a  tree-borer,  Tremex,  upon  the  larvae  of  which  her 
own  young  feed.  She  must  survey  her  territory  like 
an  oil-digger  and  calculate  where  she  is  likely  to 
strike  oil,  which  in  her  case  is  the  burrow  of  her  host 
Tremex.  There  is  a  vast  series  of  facts  in  natural 
history  like  this  that  are  of  little  interest  until  we 
understand  them.  They  are  like  the  outside  of  a 
book  which  may  attract  us,  but  which  can  mean 
little  to  us  until  we  have  opened  and  perused  its 
pages. 

The  nature-lover  is  not  looking  for  mere  facts, 
but  for  meanings,  for  something  he  can  translate 
into  the  terms  of  his  own  life.  He  wants  facts,  but 
significant  facts  —  luminous  facts  that  throw  light 
upon  the  ways  of  animate  and  inanimate  nature. 
A  bird  picking  up  crumbs  from  my  window-sill  does 
not  mean  much  to  me.  It  is  a  pleasing  sight  and 
touches  a  tender  cord,  but  it  does  not  add  much  to 
my  knowledge  of  bird-life.  But  when  I  see  a  bird 
pecking  and  fluttering  angrily  at  my  window-pane, 
as  I  now  and  then  do  in  spring,  apparently  under 
violent  pressure  to  get  in,  I  am  witnessing  a  signi- 
ficant comedy  in  bird-life,  one  that  illustrates  the 
limits  of  animal  instinct.  The  bird  takes  its  own 
reflected  image  in  the  glass  for  a  hated  rival,  and  is 
bent  on  demolishing  it.  Let  the  assaulting  bird  get 
a  glimpse  of  the  inside  of  the  empty  room  through 

252 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  NATURE 

a  broken  pane,  and  it  is  none  the  wiser;  it  returns 
to  the  assault  as  vigorously  as  ever. 

The  fossils  in  the  rocks  did  not  mean  much  to  the 
earlier  geologists.  They  looked  upon  them  as  freaks 
of  Nature,  whims  orf  the  creative  energy,  or  vestiges 
of  Noah's  flood.  You  see  they  were  blinded  by  the 
preconceived  notions  of  the  six-day  theory  of  crea- 
tion. 

Ill 

I  do  not  know  that  the  bird  has  taught  me  any 
valuable  lesson.  Indeed,  I  do  not  go  to  Nature  to 
be  taught.  I  go  for  enjoyment  and  companionship. 
I  go  to  bathe  in  her  as  in  a  sea;  I  go  to  give  my  eyes 
and  ears  and  all  my  senses  a  free,  clean  field  and  to 
tone  up  my  spirits  by  her  "primal  sanities."  If  the 
bird  has  not  preached  to  me,  it  has  added  to  the  re- 
sources of  my  life,  it  has  widened  the  field  of  my 
interests,  it  has  afforded  me  another  beautiful  ob- 
ject to  love,  and  has  helped  make  me  feel  more  at 
home  in  this  world.  To  take  the  birds  out  of  my  life 
would  be  like  lopping  off  so  many  branches  from  the 
tree :  there  is  so  much  less  surface  of  leafage  to  absorb 
the  sunlight  and  bring  my  spirits  in  contact  with  the 
vital  currents.  We  cannot  pursue  any  natural  study 
with  love  and  enthusiasm  without  the  object  of  it 
becoming  a  part  of  our  lives.  The  birds,  the  flowers, 
the  trees,  the  rocks,  all  become  linked  with  our  lives 
and  hold  the  key  to  our  thoughts  and  emotions. 

Not  till  the  bird  becomes  a  part  of  your  life  can 

253 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

its  coming  and  its  going  mean  much  to  you.  And 
it  becomes  a  part  of  your  life  when  you  have  taken 
heed  of  it  with  interest  and  affection,  when  you  have 
estabhshed  associations  with  it,  when  it  voices  the 
spring  or  the  summer  to  you,  when  it  calls  up  the 
spirit  of  the  woods  or  the  fields  or  the  shore.  When 
year  after  year  you  have  heard  the  veery  in  the 
beech  and  birch  woods  along  the  trout  streams,  or 
the  wood  thrush  May  after  May  in  the  groves  where 
you  have  walked  or  sat,  and  the  bobolink  summer 
after  summer  in  the  home  meadows,  or  the  vesper 
sparrow  in  the  upland  pastures  where  you  have  loi- 
tered as  a  boy  or  mused  as  a  man,  these  birds  will 
really  be  woven  into  the  texture  of  your  life. 

What  lessons  the  birds  have  taught  me  I  cannot 
recall;  what  a  joy  they  have  been  to  me  I  know  well. 
In  a  new  place,  amid  strange  scenes,  theirs  are  the 
voices  and  the  faces  of  old  friends.  In  Bermuda  the 
bluebirds  and  the  catbirds  and  the  cardinals  seemed 
to  make  American  territory  of  it.  Our  birds  had 
annexed  the  island  despite  the  Britishers. 

For  many  years  I  have  in  late  April  seen  the  red- 
poll warbler,  perhaps  for  only  a  single  day,  flitting 
about  as  I  walked  or  worked.  It  is  usually  my  first 
warbler,  and  my  associations  with  it  are  very  pleas- 
ing. But  I  really  did  not  know  how  pleasing  until, 
one  March  day,  when  I  was  convalescing  from  a 
serious  illness  in  one  of  our  sea-coast  towns,  I 
chanced  to  spy  the  little  traveler  in  a  vacant  lot 

254 


THE   GOSPEL  OF  NATURE 

along  the  street,  now  upon  the  ground,  now  upon  a 
bush,  nervous  and  hurried  as  usual,  uttering  its 
sharp  chip,  and  showing  the  white  in  its  tail.  The 
sight  gave  me  a  real  home  feeling.  It  did  me  more 
good  than  the  medicine  I  was  taking.  It  instantly 
made  a  living  link  with  many  past  springs.  Any- 
thing that  calls  up  a  happy  past,  how  it  warms  the 
present!  There,  too,  that  same  day  I  saw  my  first 
meadowlark  of  the  season  in  a  vacant  lot,  flashing 
out  the  white  quills  in  her  tail,  and  walking  over  the 
turf  in  the  old,  erect,  alert  manner.  The  sight  was 
as  good  as  a  letter  from  home,  and  better:  jt  had  a 
flavor  of  the  wild  and  of  my  boyhood  days  on  the 
old  farm  that  no  letter  could  ever  have. 

The  spring  birds  always  awaken  a  thrill  wherever 
I  am.  The  first  bobolink  I  hear  flying  over  north- 
ward and  bursting  out  in  song  now  and  then,  full  of 
anticipation  of  those  broad  meadows  where  he  will 
soon  be  with  his  mate;  or  the  first  swallow  twitter- 
ing joyously  overhead,  borne  on  a  warm  southern 
breeze;  or  the  first  high-hole  sounding  out  his  long, 
iterated  call  from  the  orchard  or  field  —  how  all 
these  things  send  a  wave  of  emotion  over  me! 

Pleasures  of  another  kind  are  to  find  a  new  bird,  and 
to  see  an  old  bird  in  a  new  place,  as  I  did  recently  in 
the  old  sugar-bush  where  I  used  to  help  gather  and  boil 
sap  as  a  boy.  It  was  the  logcock,  or  pileated  wood- 
pecker, a  rare  bird  anywhere,  and  one  I  had  never 
seen  before  on  the  old  farm.   I  heard  his  loud  cackle 

'^55 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

in  a  maple  tree,  saw  him  flit  from  branch  to  branch 
for  a  few  moments,  and  then  launch  out  and  fly 
toward  a  distant  wood.  But  he  left  an  impression 
with  me  that  I  should  be  sorry  to  have  missed. 

Nature  stimulates  our  sesthetic  and  our  intellect- 
ual life  and  to  a  certain  extent  our  religious  emo- 
tions, but  I  fear  we  cannot  find  much  support  for 
our  ethical  system  in  the  wa^^'s  of  wild  Nature.  I 
know  our  artist  naturalist,  Ernest  Thompson  Seton, 
claims  to  find  what  we  may  call  the  biological  value 
of  the  Ten  Commandments  in  the  lives  of  the  wild 
animals;  but  I  cannot  make  his  reasoning  hold 
water,  at  least  not  much  of  it.  Of  course  the  Ten 
Commandments  are  not  arbitrary  laws.  They  are 
largely  founded  upon  the  needs  of  the  social  or- 
ganism; but  whether  they  have  the  same  foundation 
in  the  needs  of  animal  life  apart  from  man,  apart 
from  the  world  of  moral  obligation,  is  another  ques- 
tion. The  animals  are  neither  moral  nor  immoral: 
they  are  unmoral;  their  needs  are  all  physical.  It  is 
true  that  the  command  against  murder  is  pretty  well 
kept  by  the  higher  animals.  They  rarely  kill  their  own 
kind :  hawks  do  not  prey  upon  hawks,  nor  foxes  prey 
upon  foxes,  nor  weasels  upon  weasels ;  but  lower  down 
this  does  not  hold.  Trout  eat  trout,  and  pickerel  eat 
pickerel,  and  among  the  insects  young  spiders  eat 
one  another,  and  the  female  spider  eats  her  mate, 
if  she  can  get  him.  There  is  but  little,  if  any,  neigh- 
borly love  among  even  the  higher  animals.  They 

256 


THE   GOSPEL  OF  NATURE 

treat  one  another  as  rivals,  or  associate  for  mutual 
protection.  One  cow  will  lick  and  comb  another  in 
the  most  affectionate  manner,  and  the  next  moment 
savagely  gore  her.  Hate  and  cruelty  for  the  most 
part  rule  in  the  animal  world.  A  few  of  the  higher 
animals  are  monogamous,  but  by  far  the  greater 
number  of  species  are  polygamous  or  promiscuous. 
There  is  no  mating  or  pairing  in  the  great  bovine 
tribe,  and  none  among  the  rodents  that  I  know  of, 
or  among  the  bear  family,  or  the  cat  family,  or 
among  the  seals.  When  we  come  to  the  birds,  we  find 
mating,  and  occasional  pairing  for  life,  as  with  the 
ostrich  and  perhaps  the  eagle. 

As  for  the  rights  of  property  among  the  animals, 
I  do  not  see  how  we  can  know  just  how  far  those 
rights  are  respected  among  individuals  of  the  same 
species.  We  know  that  bees  will  rob  bees,  and  that 
ants  will  rob  ants;  but  whether  or  not  one  chip- 
munk or  one  flying  squirrel  or  one  wood  mouse  will 
plunder  the  stores  of  another  I  do  not  know.  Prob- 
ably not,  as  the  owner  of  such  stores  is  usually  on 
hand  to  protect  them.  Moreover,  these  provident  lit- 
tle creatures  all  lay  up  stores  in  the  autumn,  before 
the  season  of  scarcity  sets  in,  and  so  have  no  need  to 
plunder  one  another.  In  case  the  stores  of  one  squir- 
rel were  destroyed  by  some' means,  and  it  were  able 
to  dispossess  another  of  its  hoard,  would  it  not  in 
that  case  be  a  survival  of  the  fittest,  and  so  condu- 
cive to  the  well-being  of  the  race  of  squirrels? 

257 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

I  have  never  known  any  of  our  wild  birds  to  steal 
the  nesting-material  of  another  bird  of  the  same 
kind,  but  I  have  known  birds  to  try  to  carry  off  the 
material  belonging  to  other  species. 

But  usually  the  rule  of  might  is  the  rule  of  right 
among  the  animals.  As  to  most  of  the  other  com- 
mandments, —  of  coveting,  of  bearing  false  wit- 
ness, of  honoring  the  father  and  the  mother,  and  so 
forth,  —  how  can  these  apply  to  the  animals  or  have 
any  biological  value  to  them?  Parental  obedience 
among  them  is  not  a  very  definite  thing.  There  is 
neither  obedience  nor  disobedience,  because  there 
are  no  commands.  The  alarm-cries  of  the  parents 
are  quickly  understood  by  the  young,  and  their  ac- 
tions imitated  in  the  presence  of  danger,  all  of 
which  of  course  has  a  biological  value. 

The  instances  which  Mr.  Seton  cites  of  animals 
fleeing  to  man  for  protection  from  their  enemies 
prove  to  my  mind  only  how  the  greater  fear  drives 
out  the  lesser.  The  hotly  pursued  animal  sees  a  pos- 
sible cover  in  a  group  of  men  and  horses  or  in  an 
unoccupied  house,  and  rushes  there  to  hide.  What 
else  could  the  act  mean?  So  a  hunted  deer  or  sheep 
will  leap  from  a  precipice  which,  under  ordinary 
circumstances,  it  would  avoid.  So  would  a  man. 
Fear  makes  bold  in  such  cases. 

I  certainly  have  found  "good  in  everything,"  — 
in  all  natural  processes  and  products,  —  not  the 
"good"  of  the  Sunday-school  books,  but  the  good  of 

258 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  NATURE 

natural  law  and  order,  the  good  of  that  system  of 
things  out  of  which  we  came  and  which  is  the  source 
of  our  health  and  strength.  It  is  good  that  fire 
should  burn,  even  if  it  consumes  your  house;  it  is 
good  that  force  should  crush,  even  if  it  crushes  you; 
it  is  good  that  rain  should  fall,  even  if  it  destroys 
your  crops  or  floods  your  land.  Plagues  and  pesti- 
lences attest  the  constancy  of  natural  law.  They  set 
us  to  cleaning  our  streets  and  houses  and  to  readjust- 
ing our  relations  to  outward  nature.  Only  in  a  live 
universe  could  disease  and  death  prevail.  Death  is 
a  phase  of  life,  a  redistributing  of  the  type.  Decay 
is  another  kind  of  growth. 

Yes,  good  in  everything,  because  law  in  every- 
thing, truth  in  everything,  the  sequence  of  cause  and 
effect  in  everything,  and  it  may  all  be  good  to  me  if 
on  the  right  principles  I  relate  my  life  to  it.  I  can 
make  the  heat  and  the  cold  serve  me,  the  winds  and 
the  floods,  gravity  and  all  the  chemical  and  dynami- 
cal forces,  serve  me,  if  I  take  hold  of  them  by  the 
right  handle.  The  bad  in  things  arises  from  our 
abuse  or  misuse  of  them  or  from  pur  wrong  relations 
to  them.  A  thing  is  good  or  bad  according  as  it 
stands  related  to  my  constitution.  We  say  the  order 
of  nature  is  rational ;  but  is  it  not  because  our  reason 
is  the  outcome  of  that  order?  Our  well-being  consists 
in  learning  it  and  in  adjusting  our  lives  to  it.  When 
we  cross  it  or  seek  to  contravene  it,  we  are  destroyed. 
But  Nature  in  her  universal  procedures  is  not  ra- 

259 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

tional,  as  I  am  rational  when  I  weed  my  garden, 
prune  my  trees,  select  my  seed  or  my  stock,  or  arm 
myself  with  tools  or  weapons.  In  such  matters  I 
take  a  short  cut  to  that  which  Nature  reaches  by  a 
slow,  roundabout,  and  wasteful  process.  How  does 
she  weed  her  garden?  By  the  survival  of  the  fittest. 
How  does  she  select  her  breeding-stock?  By  the  law 
of  battle;  the  strongest  rules.  Hers,  I  repeat,  is  a 
slow  and  wasteful  process.  She  fertilizes  the  soil  by 
plowing  in  the  crop.  She  cannot  take  a  short  cut. 
She  assorts  and  arranges  her  goods  by  the  law  of  the 
winds  and  the  tides.  She  builds  up  with  one  hand 
and  pulls  down  with  the  other.  Man  changes  the 
conditions  to  suit  the  things.  Nature  changes  the 
things  to  suit  the  conditions.  She  adapts  the  plant 
or  the  animal  to  its  environment.  She  does  not 
drain  her  marshes;  she  fills  them  up.  Hers  is  the 
larger  reason  —  the  reason  of  the  All.  Man's  reason 
introduces  a  new  method;  it  cuts  across,  modifies, 
or  abridges  the  order  of  Nature. 

I  do  not  see  design  in  Nature  in  the  old  teleological 
sense;  but  I  see  everything  working  to  its  own  pro- 
per end,  and  that  end  is  foretold  in  the  means. 
Things  are  not  designed;  things  are  begotten.  It  is  as 
if  the  final  plan  of  a  man's  house,  after  he  had  begun 
to  build  it,  should  be  determined  by  the  winds  and 
the  rains  and  the  shape  of  the  ground  upon  which  it 
stands.  The  eye  is  begotten  by  those  vibrations  in 
the  ether  called  light,  the  ear  by  those  vibrations  in 

260 


THE   GOSPEL  OF  NATURE 

the  air  called  sound,  the  sense  of  smell  by  those 
emanations  called  odors.  There  are  probably  other 
vibrations  and  emanations  that  we  have  no  senses 
for  because  our  well-being  does  not  demand  them. 
We  think  it  reasonable  that  a  stone  should  fall 
and  that  smoke  should  rise  because  we  have  never 
known  either  of  them  to  do  the  contrary.  We  think 
it  reasonable  that  fire  should  burn  and  that  frost 
should  freeze,  because  this  accords  with  universal 
experience.  Thus,  there  is  a  large  order  of  facts 
that  are  reasonable  because  they  are  invariable :  the 
same  effect  always  follows  the  same  cause.  Our 
reason  is  developed  and  disciplined  by  observing 
the  order  of  Nature;  and  yet  human  rationality  is  of 
another  order  from  the  rationality  of  Nature.  Man 
learns  from  Nature  how  to  master  and  control  her. 
He  turns  her  currents  into  new  channels;  he  spurs 
her  in  directions  of  his  own.  Nature  has  no  economic 
or  scientific  rationality.  She  progresses  by  the 
method  of  trial  and  error.  Her  advance  is  symbol- 
ized by  that  of  the  child  learning  to  walk.  She  ex- 
periments endlessly.  Evolution  has  worked  all 
around  the  horizon.  In  feeling  her  way  to  man  she 
has  produced  thousands  of  other  forms  of  life.  The 
globe  is  peopled  as  it  is  because  the  creative  energy 
was  blind  and  did  not  at  once  find  the  single  straight 
road  to  man.  Had  the  law  of  variation  worked  only 
in  one  direction,  man  might  have  found  himself  the 
sole  occupant  of  the  universe.   Behold  the  varieties 

261 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

of  trees,  of  shrubs,  of  grasses,  of  birds,  of  insects, 
because  Nature  does  not  work  as  man  does,  with 
an  eye  single  to  one  particular  end.  She  scatters, 
she  sows  her  seed  upon  the  wind,  she  commits  her 
germs  to  the  waves  and  the  floods.  Nature  is  in- 
diflPerent  to  waste,  because  what  goes  out  of  one 
pocket  goes  into  another.  She  is  indifferent  to  fail- 
ure, because  failure  on  one  line  means  success  on 
some  other. 

IV 

But  I  am  not  preaching  much  of  a  gospel,  am  I? 
Only  the  gospel  of  contentment,  of  appreciation,  of 
heeding  simple  near-by  things  —  a  gospel  the  bur- 
den of  which  still  is  love,  but  love  that  goes  hand  in 
hand  with  understanding. 

There  is  so  much  in  Nature  that  is  lovely  and  lov- 
able, and  so  much  that  gives  us  pause.  But  here  it 
is,  and  here  we  are,  and  we  must  make  the  most  of  it. 
If  the  ways  of  the  Eternal  as  revealed  in  his  works 
are  past  finding  out,  we  must  still  unflinchingly  face 
what  our  reason  reveals  to  us.  '*Red  in  tooth  and 
claw."  Nature  does  not  preach;  she  enforces,  she 
executes.  All  her  answers  are  yea,  yea,  or  nay,  nay. 
Of  the  virtues  and  beatitudes  of  which  the  gospel  of 
Christ  makes  so  much  —  meekness,  forgiveness,  self- 
denial,  charity,  love,  holiness  —  she  knows  nothing. 
Put  yourself  in  her  way,  and  she  crushes  you;  she 
burns  you,  freezes  you,  stings  you,  bites  you,  or 
devours  you. 

262 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  NATURE 

Yet  I  would  not  say  that  the  study  "of  Nature  did 
not  favor  meekness  or  sobriety  or  gentleness  or  for- 
giveness or  charity,  because  the  great  Nature  stud- 
ents and  prophets,  Hke  Darwin,  would  rise  up  and 
confound  me.  Certainly  it  favors  seriousness,  truth- 
fulness, and  simplicity  of  life;  or,  are  only  the  seri- 
ous and  single-minded  drawn  to  the  study  of  Na- 
ture? I  doubt  very  much  if  it  favors  devoutness  or 
holiness,  as  those  qualities  are  inculcated  by  the 
church,  or  any  form  of  religious  enthusiasm.    De- 
voutness and  holiness  come  of  an  attitude  toward 
the  universe  that  is  in  many  ways  incompatible  with 
that  implied  by  the  pursuit  of  natural  science.   The 
joy  of  the  Nature  student  like  Darwin  or  any  great 
naturalist  is  to  know,  to  find  out  the  reason  of 
things  and  the  meaning  of  things,  to  trace  the  foot- 
steps of  the  creative  energy;  while  the  religious 
devotee  is  intent  only  upon  losing  himself  in  infinite 
being.  True,  there  have  been  devout  naturalists  and 
men  of  science;  but  their  devoutness  did  not  date 
from  their  Nature  studies,  but  from  their  training, 
or  from  the  times  in  which  they  lived.    Theology 
and  science,  it  must  be  said,  will  not  mingle  much 
better  than  oil  and  water,  and  your  devout  scientist 
and  devout  Nature  student  lives  in  two  separate 
compartments  of  his  being  at  different  times.   In- 
tercourse with  Nature  —  I  mean  intellectual  inter- 
course, not  merely  the  emotional  intercourse  of  the 
sailor  or  explorer  or  farmer  —  tends  to  beget  a  habit 

263 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

of  mind  the  farthest  possible  removed  from  the 
myth-making,  the  vision-seeing,  the  voice-hearing 
habit  and  temper.  In  all  matters  relating  to  the  vis- 
ible, concrete  universe  it  substitutes  broad  daylight 
for  twilight;  it  supplants  fear  with  curiosity;  it  over- 
throws superstition  with  fact;  it  blights  credulity 
with  the  frost  of  skepticism,  I  say  frost  of  skepti- 
cism advisedly.  Skepticism  is  a  much  more  health- 
ful and  robust  habit  of  mind  than  the  limp,  pale- 
blooded,  non-resisting  habit  that  we  call  credulity. 
In  intercourse  with  Nature  you  are  dealing  with 
things  at  first  hand,  and  you  get  a  rule,  a  standard, 
that  serves  you  through  life.  You  are  dealing  with 
primal  sanities,  primal  honesties,  primal  attraction; 
you  are  touching  at  least  the  hem  of  the  garment 
with  which  the  infinite  is  clothed,  and  virtue  goes 
out  from  it  to  you.  It  must  be  added  that  you  are 
dealing  with  primal  cruelty,  primal  blindness,  pri- 
mal wastefulness,  also.  Nature  works  with  refer- 
ence to  no  measure  of  time,  no  bounds  of  space,  and 
no  limits  of  material.  Her  economies  are  not  our 
economies.  She  is  prodigal,  she  is  careless,  she  is 
indifferent;  yet  nothing  is  lost.  What  she  lavishes 
with  one  hand,  she  gathers  in  with  the  other.  She 
is  blind,  yet  she  hits  the  mark  because  she  shoots  in 
all  directions.  Her  germs  fill  the  air;  the  winds  and 
the  tides  are  her  couriers.  When  you  think  you  have 
defeated  her,  your  triumph  is  hers;  it  is  still  by  her 
laws  that  you  reach  your  end. 

264 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  NATURE 

We  make  ready  our  garden  in  a  season,  and  plant 
our  seeds  and  hoe  our  crops  by  some  sort  of  system. 
Can  any  one  tell  how  many  hundreds  of  millions  of 
years  Nature  has  been  making  ready  her  garden  and 
planting  her  seeds? 

There  can  be  little  doubt,  I  think,  but  that  inter- 
course with  Nature  and  a  knowledge  of  her  ways 
tends  to  simplicity  of  life.  We  come  more  and  more 
to  see  through  the  follies  and  vanities  of  the  world 
and  to  appreciate  the  real  values.  We  load  ourselves 
up  with  so  many  false  burdens,  our  complex  civiliza- 
tion breeds  in  us  so  many  false  or  artificial  wants, 
that  we  become  separated  from  the  real  sources  of 
our  strength  and  health  as  by  a  gulf. 

For  my  part,  as  I  grow  older  I  am  more  and  more 
inclined  to  reduce  my  baggage,  to  lop  off  superflu- 
ities. I  become  more  and  more  in  love  with  simple 
things  and  simple  folk  —  a  small  house,  a  hut  in  the 
woods,  a  tent  on  the  shore.  The  show  and  splendor 
of  great  houses,  elaborate  furnishings,  stately 
halls,  oppress  me,  impose  upon  me.  They  fix  the 
attention  upon  false  values,  they  set  up  a  false 
standard  of  beauty;  they  stand  between  me  and  the 
real  feeders  of  character  and  thought.  A  man  needs 
a  good  roof  over  his  head  winter  and  summer,  and  a 
good  chimney  and  a  big  wood-pile  in  winter.  The 
more  open  his  four  walls  are,  the  more  fresh  air  he 
will  get,  and  the  longer  he  will  live. 

How  the  contemplation  of  Nature  as  a  whole  does 

^Q5 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

take  the  conceit  out  of  us !  How  we  dwindle  to  mere 
specks  and  our  little  lives  to  the  span  of  a  moment 
in  the  presence  of  the  cosmic  bodies  and  the  inter- 
stellar spaces!  How  we  hurry!  How  we  husband 
our  time!  A  year,  a  month,  a  day,  an  hour  may 
mean  so  much  to  us.  Behold  the  infinite  leisure  of 
Nature! 

A  few  trillions  or  quadrillions  of  years,  what  mat- 
ters it  to  the  Eternal?  Jupiter  and  Saturn  must  be 
billions  of  years  older  than  the  earth.  They  are  evid- 
ently yet  passing  through  that  condition  of  cloud 
and  vapor  and  heat  that  the  earth  passed  through 
untold  seons  ago,  and  they  will  not  reach  the  stage 
of  life  till  aeons  to  come.  But  what  matters  it?  Only 
man  hurries.  Only  the  Eternal  has  infinite  time. 
When  life  comes  to  Jupiter,  the  earth  will  doubtless 
long  have  been  a  dead  world.  It  may  continue  a 
dead  world  for  seons  longer  before  it  is  melted  up  in 
the  eternal  crucible  and  recast,  and  set  on  its  career 
of  life  again. 

Familiarity  with  the  ways  of  the  Eternal  as  they 
are  revealed  in  the  physical  universe  certainly  tends 
to  keep  a  man  sane  and  sober  and  safeguards  him 
against  the  vagaries  and  half-truths  which  our  creeds 
and  indoor  artificial  lives  tend  to  breed.  Shut  away 
from  Nature,  or  only  studying  her  through  religious 
fears  and  superstitions,  what  a  mess  a  large  body  of 
mankind  in  all  ages  have  made  of  it!  Think  of  the 
obsession  of  the  speedy  "end  of  the  world"  which 

266 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  NATURE 

has  so  often  taken  possession  of  whole  communities, 
as  if  a  world  that  has  been  an  eternity  in  forming 
could  end  in  a  day,  or  on  the  striking  of  the  clock! 
It  is  not  many  years  since  a  college  professor  pub- 
lished a  book  figuring  out,  from  some  old  historical 
documents  and  predictions,  just  the  year  in  which 
the  great  mundane  show  would  break  up.  When  I 
was  a  small  boy  at  school  in  the  early  forties,  during 
the  Millerite  excitement  about  the  approaching  end 
of  all  mundane  things,  I  remember,  on  the  day 
when  the  momentous  event  was  expected  to  take 
place,  how  the  larger  school-girls  were  thrown  into 
a  great  state  of  alarm  and  agitation  by  a  thunder- 
cloud that  let  down  a  curtain  of  rain,  blotting  out 
the  mountain  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  valley. 
"There  it  comes!"  they  said,  and  their  tears  flowed 
copiously.  I  remember  that  I  did  not  share  their 
fears,  but  watched  the  cloud,  curious  as  to  what  the 
end  of  the  world  would  be  like.  I  cannot  brag,  as 
Thoreau  did,  when  he  said  he  would  not  go  around 
the  corner  to  see  the  world  blow  up.  I  am  quite  sure 
my  curiosity  would  get  the  better  of  me  and  that  I 
should  go,  even  at  this  late  day.  Or  think  of  the 
more  harmless  obsession  of  many  good  people  about 
the  second  coming  of  Christ,  or  about  the  resurrec- 
tion of  the  physical  body  when  the  last  trumpet 
shall  sound.  A  little  natural  knowledge  ought  to  be 
fatal  to  all  such  notions.  Natural  knowledge  shows 
us  how  transient  and  insignificant  we  are,  and  how 

267 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

vast  and  everlasting  the  world  is,  which  was  geons 
before  we  were,  and  will  be  other  seons  after  we  are 
gone,  yea,  after  the  whole  race  of  man  is  gone. 
Natural  knowledge  takes  the  conceit  out  of  us,  and 
is  the  sure  antidote  to  all  our  petty  anthropomorphic 
views  of  the  universe. 


I  was  struck  by  this  passage  in  one  of  the  recently 
published  letters  of  Saint-Gaudens:  "The  principal 
thought  in  my  life  is  that  we  are  on  a  planet  going 
no  one  knows  where,  probably  to  something  higher 
(on  the  Darwinian  principle  of  evolution);  that, 
whatever  it  is,  the  passage  is  terribly  sad  and  tragic, 
and  to  bear  up  at  times  against  what  seems  to  be  the 
Great  Power  that  is  over  us,  the  practice  of  love, 
charity,  and  courage  are  the  great  things." 

The  " Great  Power'*  that  is  over  us  does  seem  un- 
mindful of  us  as  individuals,  if  it  does  not  seem 
positively  against  us,  as  Saint-Gaudens  seemed  to 
think  it  was. 

Surely  the  ways  of  the  Eternal  are  not  as  our 
ways.  Our  standards  of  prudence,  of  economy,  of 
usefulness,  of  waste,  of  delay,  of  failure  —  how  far 
off  they  seem  from  the  scale  upon  which  the  uni- 
verse is  managed  or  deports  itself!  If  the  earth 
should  be  blown  to  pieces  to-day,  and  all  life  in- 
stantly blotted  out,  would  it  not  be  just  like  what 
we  know  of  the  cosmic  prodigality  and  indifference? 

268 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  NATURE 

Such  appalling  disregard  of  all  human  motives  and 
ends  bewilders  us. 

Of  all  the  planets  of  our  system  probably  only 
two  or  three  are  in  a  condition  to  sustain  life.  Mer- 
cury, the  youngest  of  them  all,  is  doubtless  a  dead 
world,  with  absolute  zero  on  one  side  and  a  furnace 
temperature  on  the  other.  But  what  matters  it? 
Whose  loss  or  gain  is  it?  Life  seems  only  an  incident 
in  the  universe,  evidently  not  an  end.  It  appears  or  it 
does  not  appear,  and  who  shall  say  yea  or  nay?  The 
asteroids  at  one  time  no  doubt  formed  a  planet  be- 
tween Mars  and  Jupiter.  Some  force  which  no  adjec- 
tive can  describe  or  qualify  blew  it  into  fragments, 
and  there,  in  its  stead,  is  this  swarm  of  huge  rocks 
making  their  useless  rounds  in  the  light  of  the  sun 
forever  and  ever.  What  matters  it  to  the  prodigal 
All?  Bodies  larger  than  our  sun  collide  in  the  depths 
of  space  before  our  eyes  with  results  so  terrific  that 
words  cannot  even  hint  them.  The  last  of  these  colli- 
sions —  of  this  "wreck  of  matter  and  crush  of 
worlds"  —  reported  itself  to  our  planet  in  Febru- 
ary, 1901,  when  a  star  of  the  twelfth  magnitude 
suddenly  blazed  out  as  a  star  of  the  first  magnitude 
and  then  slowly  faded.  It  was  the  grand  finale  of  the 
independent  existence  of  two  enormous  celestial  bod- 
ies. They  apparently  ended  in  dust  that  whirled  away 
in  the  vast  abyss  of  siderial  space,  blown  by  the 
winds  upon  which  suns  and  systems  drift  as  autumn 
leaves.    It  would  be  quite  in  keeping  with  the  ob- 

269 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

served  ways  of  the  Eternal,  if  these  bodies  had  had 
worlds  in  their  train,  teeming  with  life,  which  met 
the  same  fate  as  the  central  colliding  bodies. 

Does  not  force  as  we  know  it  in  this  world  go  its 
own  way  with  the  same  disregard  of  the  precious 
thing  we  call  life?  Such  long  and  patient  prepara- 
tions for  it,  —  apparently  the  whole  stellar  system 
in  labor  pains  to  bring  it  forth,  —  and  yet  held  so 
cheaply  and  indifferently  in  the  end !  The  small  in- 
sect that  just  now  alighted  in  front  of  my  jack-plane 
as  I  was  dressing  a  timber,  and  was  reduced  to  a 
faint  yellow  stain  upon  the  wood,  is  typical  of  the 
fate  of  man  before  the  unregarding  and  unswerving 
terrestrial  and  celestial  forces.  The  great  wheels 
go  round  just  the  same  whether  they  are  crushing 
the  man  or  crushing  the  corn  for  his  bread.  It  is  all 
one  to  the  Eternal.  Flood,  fire,  wind,  gravity,  are 
for  us  or  against  us  indifferently.  And  yet  the  earth 
is  here,  garlanded  with  the  seasons  and  riding  in  the 
celestial  currents  like  a  ship  in  calm  summer  seas, 
and  man  is  here  with  all  things  under  his  feet.  All 
is  well  in  our  corner  of  the  universe.  The  great  mill 
has  made  meal  of  our  grist  and  not  of  the  miller. 
We  have  taken  our  chances  and  have  won.  More 
has  been  for  us  than  against  us.  During  the  little 
segment  of  time  that  man  has  been  upon  the  earth, 
only  one  great  calamity  that  might  be  called  cosmi- 
cal  has  befallen  it.  The  ice  age  of  one  or  two  hun- 
dred thousand  years  was  such  a  calamity.  But  man 

270 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  NATURE 

survived  it.  The  spring  came  again,  and  life,  the 
traveler,  picked  itself  up  and  made  a  new  start. 
But  if  he  had  not  survived  it,  if  nothing  had  sur- 
vived it,  the  great  procession  would  have  gone  on 
just  the  same;  the  gods  would  have  been  just  as  well 
pleased. 

The  battle  is  to  the  strong,  the  race  is  to  the  fleet. 
This  is  the  order  of  nature.  No  matter  for  the  rest, 
for  the  weak,  the  slow,  the  unlucky,  so  that  the  fight 
is  won,  so  that  the  race  of  man  continues.  You  and  I 
may  fail  and  fall  before  our  time;  the  end  may  be  a 
tragedy  or  a  comedy.  What  matters  it?  Only  some 
one  must  succeed,  will  succeed. 

We  are  here,  I  say,  because,  in  the  conflict  of 
forces,  the  influences  that  made  for  life  have  been  in 
the  ascendant.  This  conflict  of  forces  has  been  a 
part  of  the  process  of  our  development.  We  have 
been  ground  out  as  between  an  upper  and  a  nether 
millstone,  but  we  have  squeezed  through,  we  have 
actually  arrived,  and  are  all  the  better  for  the  grind- 
ing —  all  those  who  have  survived.  But,  alas  for 
those  whose  lives  went  out  in  the  crush!  Maybe 
they  often  broke  the  force  of  the  blow  for  us. 

Nature  is  not  benevolent;  Nature  is  just,  gives 
pound  for  pound,  measure  for  measure,  makes  no 
exceptions,  never  tempers  her  decrees  with  mercy, 
or  winks  at  any  infringement  of  her  laws.  And  in 
the  end  is  not  this  best.?  Could  the  universe  be  run 
as  a  charity  or  a  benevolent  institution,  or  as  a  poor- 

271 


TIME  AND  CHANGE 

house  of  the  most  approved  pattern?  Without  this 
merciless  justice,  this  irrefragable  law,  where  should 
we  have  brought  up  long  ago?  It  is  a  hard  gospel; 
but  rocks  are  hard  too,  yet  they  form  the  founda- 
tions of  the  hills. 

Man  introduces  benevolence,  mercy,  altruism, 
into  the  world,  and  he  pays  the  price  in  his  added 
burdens;  and  he  reaps  his  reward  in  the  vast  social 
and  civic  organizations  that  were  impossible  with- 
out these  things. 

I  have  no  doubt  that  the  life  of  man  upon  this 
planet  will  end,  as  all  other  forms  of  life  will  end. 
But  the  potential  man  will  continue  and  does  con- 
tinue on  other  spheres.  One  cannot  think  of  one 
part  of  the  universe  as  producing  man,  and  no  other 
part  as  capable  of  it.  The  universe  is  all  of  a  piece 
so  far  as  its  material  constituents  are  concerned; 
that  we  know.  Can  there  be  any  doubt  that  it  is 
all  of  a  piece  so  far  as  its  invisible  and  intangible 
forces  and  capabilities  are  concerned?  Can  we  be- 
lieve that  the  earth  is  an  alien  and  a  stranger  in  the 
universe?  that  it  has  no  near  kin?  that  there  is  no 
tie  of  blood,  so  to  speak,  between  it  and  the  other 
planets  and  systems?  Are  the  planets  not  all  of  one 
family,  sitting  around  the  same  central  source  of 
warmth  and  life?  And  is  not  our  system  a  member 
of  a  still  larger  family  or  tribe,  and  it  of  a  still  larger, 
all  bound  together  by  ties  of  consanguinity?  Size 
is  nothing,  space  is  nothing.   The  worlds  are  only 

272 


THE   GOSPEL  OF  NATURE 

red  corpuscles  in  the  arteries  of  the  infinite.  If  man 
has  not  yet  appeared  on  the  other  planets,  he  will  in 
time  appear,  and  when  he  has  disappeared  from  this 
globe,  he  will  still  continue  elsewhere. 

I  do  not  say  that  he  is  the  end  and  aim  of  crea- 
tion; it  would  be  logical,  I  think,  to  expect  a  still 
higher  form.  Man  has  been  man  but  a  little  while 
comparatively,  less  than  one  hour  of  the  twenty- 
four  of  the  vast  geologic  day;  a  few  hours  more  and 
he  will  be  gone;  less  than  another  geologic  day  like 
the  past,  and  no  doubt  all  life  from  the  earth  will  be 
gone.  What  then?  The  game  will  be  played  over 
and  over  again  in  other  worlds,  without  approach- 
ing any  nearer  the  final  end  than  we  are  now.  There 
is  no  final  end,  as  there  was  no  absolute  beginning, 
and  can  be  none  with  the  infinite. 

PROPERTY  ur 

El&M.  COLLEGE  LIBRARY. 

THE   END 


INDEX 


Adirondack  Mountains,  94, 96, 109. 

Agassiz,  Louis,  disbelief  in  evolu- 
tion, 1,  157;  first  conception  of  the 
continental  ice-sheet,  157. 

Aiken,  Mr.,  of  the  island  of  Maui, 
attentions  received  from,  133- 
136. 

Andrews,  Judge,  of  Hilo,  Hawaii, 
149. 

Animals,  unmorality  of,  256-258; 
fleeing  to  man  for  protection,  258. 
See  also  Life. 

Appalachian  Mountains,  92,  94. 

Arizona,  Bad  Lands  of,  103. 

Armor,  and  immobility,  225. 

Astronomy,  and  biology,  206,  207. 

Bad  Lands,  Arizona,  103. 

Beginnings,  12. 

Bergson,  Henri  Louis,  his  Creative 
Evolution,  202  note;  on  armored 
organisms,  225;  on  intelligence 
and  instinct,  230. 

Bermuda,  American  birds  in,  254. 

Biological  tree,  the  image  mislead- 
ing, 232. 

Biology,  its  new  career  under  evolu- 
tion, 206,  207;  rooted  in  geology, 
240;  not  for  all  men,  250. 

Birds,  and  reflected  images,  252; 
lessons  from,  253-256;  mating  for 
life,  257;  stealing  nesting-mate- 
rial, 258. 

Bluebird  {Sialia  sialis),  evolution 
of,  201. 

Bluebird  {Sialia  sp.),  in  the  Yosem- 
ite,  78. 

Bobolink  {Dolichonyx  oryzivorus) , 
255. 

Boulders,  glacier-borne,  163,  164. 

Brain,  the,  evolution  of,  16. 

Cafions,  Nature's  studies  in,  44,  45. 

See  also  Grand  Canon. 
Cathedral  Rocks,  73. 


Catskills,  the,  geological  structure, 

92,  93;  erosion  in,  184-186. 
Cell,  the,  the  unit  of  life,  35. 
Chamberlin,  Thomas  C,  and  R.  D. 

Salisbury,  their  Geology,  101. 
Chemistry,  of  the  rocks,  105-108; 

and  life,  209-211. 
Chief  Mountain,  172. 
Chin,    the,    man's    only    exclusive 

member,  31. 
Clover,  white,  137. 
Colorado     River,     erosion    in    the 

Grand  Canon,  61-64. 
Cope,  Edward  D.,  19,  20. 
Country,  life  in  the,  244,  245. 
Craters,   Haleakala,    138-143;    Ki- 

lauea,  150-155. 
Creation,  a  continuous  process,  188; 

by   fiat   and   by   evolution,    203, 

204;  by  chemistry  and  mechanics, 

211. 
Cuvier,  88. 

Dana,  James  Dwight,  quoted,  10, 
171;  101. 

Darwin,  Charles,  made  the  theory 
of  evolution  alive  and  real,  206; 
218,  250. 

Dawson,  Sir  John  William,  disbe- 
lief in  evolution,  1,  2. 

Diamond  Head,  Oahu,  121,  130, 
131. 

Dinosaurs,  16. 

Dryopithecus,  222. 

Dutton,  Maj.  Clarence  Edward, 
quoted,  51,  60,  61. 

Earth,  the,  history  of,  13-15,  21-23, 
88,  89;  ripening  of,  23;  age  of,  85; 
its  growth,  86,  87;  crust  of,  95; 
tranquillity  of  its  history,  111- 
113;  changes  in  the  crust  of,  114- 
116,  171,  172;  vitality  of,  187; 
ultimate  fate  of,  268,  269.  See 
also  Geology  and  World. 


275 


INDEX 


Earthquakes,  171,  172. 

El  Capitan,  73. 

Emerson,  Ralph  Waldo,  quoted,  97, 
98,  187,  2-15;  a  follower  of  Agas- 
siz,  98. 

Environment,  influence  of,  214,  215. 

Eohippus,  176. 

Erosion,  in  the  Hawaiian  Islands, 
59,  135,  146-148;  its  part  in  shap- 
ing the  earth's  surface,  91;  slow- 
ness of  its  work,  182-186. 

Evolution,  the  long  road  of,  1-38; 
belief  and  disbelief  in  the  doctrine, 
1-7;  adds  greatly  to  the  wonder  of 
life,  3;  length  of  time  implied  by, 
7-11;  endless  beginning  and  end- 
less ending,  12;  from  the  simple 
to  the  complex,  23,  24;  concen- 
trates along  certain  lines,  36; 
hard  to  get  on  intimate  terms 
with,  177;  makes  the  universe 
alive,  187;  the  tide  at  the  full,  192, 
193;  Walt  Whitman  as  an  evolu- 
tionist, 197;  hindrances  to  a  belief 
in,  198-205;  the  largest  general- 
ization of  the  modern  mind,  205; 
not  a  godless  doctrine,  212;  as  a 
prestidigitator,  213,  214;  makes 
the  world  over  for  us,  228;  the 
impulse  in,  236. 

Faith,  scientific,  175-186. 

Fire,  here  before  man.  111. 

First  Cause,  217-219. 

Frear,    Mary  Dillingham,  quoted, 

119;  125;  a  walk  with,  128-130. 
Frear,  Walter  Francis,  125;  a  walk 

with,  128-130. 

Generalization,  in  evolution,  230. 

Geologic  time,  figured  under  the 
symbol  of  a  year,  21,  22;  and 
chronological  time,  90,  91;  clock 
of,  95;  and  human  history,  97; 
periods  of,  116,  117;  powers  of, 
174;  vastness  of,  199,  200. 

Geologist,  the,  his  scientific  imagina- 
tion, 87;  interpreter  of  the  records 
of  the  rocks,  88;  his  daring  affirm- 
ations, 89;  deals  with  big  figures, 
97. 

Geology,  in  the  East  and  in  the 


West,  39-45;  of  the  Grand  Cafion, 
51-55,  57-65,  67-69;  of  the 
Yosemite,  79-83;  the  world  as 
seen  in  the  light  of,  85-117.  See 
also  Earth,  Evolution,  and  Rocks. 

Geosyncline,  94. 

Gigantic,  Nature's  experiments  with 
the,  16-18,  223. 

Glacial  periods,  gradual  approach 
of  the  Pleistocene  winter,  113, 
114. 

Glaciation,  Agassiz's  discovery, 
157;  southern  limit  in  United 
States,  158,  159;  work  of  the  ice- 
sheet,  159,  160;  evidence  near 
home,  161-163;  flowing  of  the 
ice-sheet,  164,  165. 

Glenwood,  Hawaii,  149,  150. 

Goats,  wild,  138,  143. 

God,  immanent  in  his  universe,  179, 
199. 

"Good  in  everything,"  258,  259. 

Grand  Canon,  the,  first  impressions, 
46-49;  architectural  features  and 
suggestions,  49-54;  geology,  51- 
55,  57-65,  67-69;  cleanness,  55; 
sense  of  depth  of,  56;  look  of 
ordered  strength,  56,  57;  descent 
into,  65-70;  flowers  and  a  bird- 
song  in,  70;  contrasted  with 
Yosemite,  75-78. 

Granite,  the  Adam  rock,  102,  103; 
dissolution  of,  108. 

Guava,  135. 

Haeckel,  Ernst  Heinrich,  7,  25, 
235. 

Haleakala,  a  visit  to,  133-146. 

Halemaumau,  151. 

Half  Dome,  73. 

Hau-tree,  126,  127. 

Hawaii,  island  of,  143,  148;  visit  to, 
149-155. 

Hawaiian  Islands,  erosion  in,  59, 
135,  146-148;  shape  of  valleys  in, 
81;  origin  of,  116;  a  visit  to,  119- 
155;  lines  by  Mary  Dillingham 
Frear  on,  119;  approach  to,  119- 
121;  land  shells  of,  129,  130;  birds 
in,  132,  133,  143,  151;  mosquitoes 
in,  136. 

Hawaiian  language,  122. 


276 


INDEX 


Hawaiians,  diving  boys,  122;  surf- 
riding,  131. 

Heart,  the,  origin  of,  19. 

Heat,  its  relation  to  life,  210,  211. 

Henry  Mountains,  173. 

Hetch-Hetchy  Valley,  79,  80. 

Hilo,  149,  155. 

Honey-sucker,  151. 

Honolulu,  harbor  of,  121,  122;  first 
impressions  of  the  city,  122,  123; 
population,  123,  124;  attractions, 
124;  Americans  in,  124,  125;  the 
skylark  at,  132,  133. 

Horn-fly,  Texas,  137. 

Horns,  in  evolution,  237,  238. 

Horse,  the,  evolution  of,  33,  176; 
mankind  and,  229. 

Hudson  River,  mineral  matter  car- 
ried by,  169;  geology  of  the  two 
sides  at  New  York,  173,  174. 

Huxley,  Thomas  Henry,  218. 

lao  Valley,  134,  146. 

Ice-sheet,  continental.    See  Glacia- 

tion. 
Ichneumon-fly,  251,  252. 
Imagination,  the  scientific  and  the 

poetic,  87,  88. 

Japanese,  in  the  Hawaiian  Islands, 
134,  136,  149. 

Kahoolawe,  146. 

Kahului,  133. 

Kauai,  147,  148. 

Kilauea,  133;  visit  to  the  volcano, 

149-155. 
King's  River  Valley,  79,  80. 

Laccolites,  172,  173. 

Lahaina,  147,  149. 

Land,  a  farmer's  strong,  158. 

Lantana,  125,  126,  145. 

Lark.   See  Skylark. 

Laurentian  Hills,  109. 

Lava,  151-153,  172,  173. 

Lemurs,  235. 

Liberty  Cap,  74,  75. 

Life  (biological),  dawn  of,  5;  artifi- 
cial production  of ,  11, 209, 210;  as- 
cending series  of ,  18-21;  progress 
from   the  simple  to  the  complex. 


23,  24;  the  mystery  of  its  incep- 
tion, 37,  38;  geologic  periods  of , 
116,  117;  rises  on  stepping-stones 
of  its  dead  self,  117;  the  tide  at 
the  full,  192,  193;  nature  of,  207- 
209;  dependent  on  heat  and  chem- 
ical action,  210,  211;  origin  of, 
217-219;  the  tree  of,  232;  the 
stream  of,  233;  rankness  in  early 
biologic  times,  238.  See  also  Evo- 
lution. 

Limestone,  108,  110. 

Locomotion,  evolution  of,  21. 

Logcock.  See  Woodpecker,  north- 
ern pileated. 

London,  fossil  fruits  under,  26. 

Lowell,  Mr.,  superintendent  of 
sugar-making  plant  in  Hawaiian 
Islands,  148. 

Lowell,  Percival,  193. 

Lyell,  Sir  Charles,  82,  99-101; 
quoted,  105. 

Malaspina  Glacier,  160. 

Mammals,  origin  of,  19. 

Man,  origin  of,  1-13,  21,  175-181, 
188-194;  larger  than  his  ancestors, 
18;  the  end  of  the  life  series,  22; 
the  goal  of  life's  progress,  24,  25; 
his  specialization  in  the  brain,  26, 
27;  has  had  the  experience  of  all 
the  animals  below  him,  28,  29; 
loss  and  gain  of  organs  and  pow- 
ers in  the  course  of  his  develop- 
ment, 30-33;  fortuitous  variation 
insufficient  to  account  for  the 
evolution  of,  38;  his  ancestry,  97, 
98;  physical  and  mental  evolu- 
tion of,  189;  continuity  of  his 
descent,  190-192;  future  evolu- 
tion of,  194-196;  seems  of  another 
sphere  than  the  animals,  202, 
203;  creation  of,  203-205;  varia- 
tion in,  215-217;  his  evolution 
and  the  First  Cause,  218,  219; 
not  a  fallen,  but  a  risen,  creature, 
219;  heir  of  the  geologic  ages,  220, 
221;  concrete  conceptions  of  his 
descent,  221-223;  hazards  en- 
countered in  the  line  of  his  de- 
scent, 225-239;  one  of  the  most 
generalized  of  animals,  230;  haz- 


277 


INDEX 


ards  of  his  future,  239-241;  and 
altruism,  272;  ultimate  fate  of 
the  race,  272,  273;  his  existence 
on  other  spheres,  272,  273. 

Mango,  124,  134. 

Maui,  129;  a  visit  to,  133-149;  shape 
of,  147. 

Mauna  Kea,  148,  155. 

Mauna  Loa,  143,  148,  155. 

Merced  River,  71,  80.  See  also 
Yosemite. 

Mercury,  the  planet,  269. 

Millerite  excitement,  267. 

Mina,  132,  143. 

Mind,  human  and  animal,  202. 

Mirror  Lake,  73. 

Mississippi  River,  mineral  matter 
carried  by,  169. 

Molokai,  121,  148. 

Monophyletic  hypothesis,  the,  231. 

Monroe,  Miss  Harriet,  47. 

Montana,  an  over-thrust  in,  172. 

Mosquitoes,  in  the  Hawaiian  Is- 
lands, 140. 

Mt.  Hillers,  173. 

Mt.  Tamalpais,  172. 

Mt.  Tantalus,  Oahu,  123,  128. 

Mountains,  short-lived,  93-96; 
walks  in  the  Hawaiian,  125-130; 
a  trip  to  Haleakala,  133-146; 
robbing  the  clouds,  147;  a  trip  to 
Kilauea,  149-155. 

Mules,  at  the  Grand  Cafion,  66,  67. 

Murder,  among  animals,  256. 

Natural  selection.  See  Selection, 
natural. 

Nature,  as  an  inventor  and  experi- 
menter, 34,  35;  in  the  tropics,  126; 
vast  time  taken  by  the  processes 
of,  199;  the  "gospel"  of,  243-273; 
and  God,  246;  teaches  more  than 
she  preaches,  247;  knowledge  and 
enjoyment  of,  249-251;  reason  in, 
259-262;  progresses  by  trial  and 
error,  261,  262;  intercourse  with, 
264,  265;  largeness  of,  266;  merci- 
less justice  of,  271,  272. 

Nature-study,  249,  250. 

Needles,  the,  Maui,  129. 

Negro,  unchanged  physically  from 
ancient  times,  190. 


Nevada  Falls,  74. 
North  Dome,  73. 

Oahu,  first  sight  of,  121;  seen  from 
Haleakala,  143,  144;  erosion  on, 
147. 

Oaks,  a  peculiarity  in,  78,  79. 

Ohelo  berries,  151. 

Osborn,  Henry  Fairfield,  217,  218, 
230;  quoted,  237. 

Over-thrusts,  171,  172. 

Paia,  148. 

Palaeontologist,  the,  a  detective  of 

the  rocks,  214. 
Palsentology.   See  Evolution. 
Pali,  Hawaiian  Islands,  129. 
Palisades,  the,  174. 
Palola   Valley,    a   walk     up,    125- 

128. 
Papaya,  124. 
Parunuweap  Cafion,  62. 
Penhallow,    Mr.,   sugar   plantation 

of,  134. 
Petrified  Forests,  the,  43,  44,  76. 
Pheasant,  in  the  Hawaiian  Islands, 

137. 
Pineapple,    plantation,     144,    145; 

canning-plant,  145. 
Punch  Bowl,  Oahu,  123. 

Quartz,  108. 

Raven,  northern  {Corvus  corax  prin- 
cipalis), 230. 

Religion,  on  the  wane,  195;  forms 
change  but  the  sentiment  persists, 
246. 

Rice-bird,  of  the  Hawaiian  Islands, 
127. 

Robin,  western  {Planesticus  migra- 
tor ius  propinquus) ,  71,  78. 

Rocks,  old  and  young,  96;  gene- 
alogy of  the  sedimentary,  98-110; 
amount  of  Archaean,  98-101; 
chemistry  in  the  growth  of,  105- 
108;  depths  of  the  layers  of  sedi- 
mentary, 107;  soil  made  from, 
167,  168;  robbed  by  the  waters, 
169;  formation  of  the  sediment- 
ary, 169,  170;  over-thrusts  in 
the,  171,  172. 


278 


INDEX 


Saint-Gaudens,  Augustus,  quoted, 
268. 

Salisbury,  R.  D.  See  Chamberlin, 
Thomas  C. 

Salisbury,  Robert,  Marquis  of,  214. 

San  Francisco,  earthquake  at,  172. 

Science,  challenging  belief,  175- 
186;  ties  us  to  the  earth,  179;  dis- 
counts heaven  in  favor  of  earth, 
179;  enlarges  the  sphere  of  our 
love,  181;  atrophies  man's  faith 
but  softens  his  heart,  195;  cannot 
give  the  ultimate  explanation, 
220;  and  theology,  263. 

Sea,  the,  mother  of  the  rocks,  109; 
illusion  of  a  great  blue  wall,  130. 

Selection,  natural.  216. 

Senses,  delicacy  of  the,  244,  245. 

Sentinel  Rock,  75. 

Seton,  Ernest  Thompson,  256,  258. 

Shells,  and  armor,  225. 

Shells,  Hawaiian,  129,  130. 

Sill,  173,  174. 

Silver  sword,  a  plant  in  the  crater 
of  Haleakala,  141. 

Skepticism,  264. 

Skylark,  in  the  Hawaiian  Islands, 
132,  133,  137,  138. 

Smell,  the  sense  of,  244. 

Soil,  the,  history  of,  14,  15;  born  of 
the  rocks,  86;  our  mother,  167; 
its  making,  167,  168;  cycle  of  the, 
169,  170. 

Specialization,  in  evolution,  229. 

Stars,  collisions  among,  269. 

Sugar-making,  in  the  Hawaiian 
Islands,  148. 

Surf-riding,  131,  132. 

Tantalus,  Mt.,  123,  128. 
Tennyson,  Alfred,  quoted,  96;  his 

"Parnassus,"  206. 
Thalessa,  251,  252, 
Theology,  and  science,  263. 
Three  Brothers,  73. 


Thrush,  Oahu,  127. 

Tiger,  sabre-toothed,  229. 

Time.    See  Geologic  time. 

Titanothere,  230,  237. 

Tobacco,  its  effect  on  the  sense  of 

smell,  244. 
Tree-ferns,  150. 
Tropics,  nature  in  the,  126. 
Tuscarora  Deep,  120. 

Variation,  in  animals  and  man,  215- 

217. 
Vernal  Falls,  74. 

Waikiki,  surf-riding  at,  131,  132. 
Wailuku,  134,  147,  148. 
Walking-club,  Honolulu,  125. 
Walks,    in   the   Hawaiian    Islands, 

125-130. 
Warbler,  yellow  red-poll,  or  yellow 

palm  warbler  {Dendroica  palma- 

rum  hypochrysea) ,  254,  255;  notes 

of,  255. 
Warner,    Charles  Dudley,    quoted, 

47. 
Water,    chemical    and    mechanical 

powers  of,  169. 
Waterfall,  a  reversed,  129. 
Whately,  Richard,  194. 
Whitman,  Walt,    quoted,  79,   197, 

202,  213;  and  evolution,  197. 
Whitney,  Josiah  Dwight,  82. 
Woodpecker,  northern  pileated,  or 

logcock      {Phl(£otomus      pileatus 

abieticola),  255,  256. 
World,  end  of  the,  266,  267. 
Wren,  canon  {Gather pes  mexicanus 

conspersus),  70. 

Yosemite,  its  charms,  71,  72;  some 
of  its  features,  73-75;  contrasted 
with  the  Grand  Canon,  75-78; 
oaks  in,  78,  79;  geology  of,  79-83. 

Yosemite  Falls,  75,  77,  78. 


CAMBRIDGE  .  MASSACHUSETTS 
U    .    S    .    A 


CifH 
168     43  71 


i 


